CIHM 

Microfiche 
Series 

(IMonographs) 


ICIMH 

Collection  de 

microfiches 

(monographies) 


Institutt  for  Historical  Microroproductlon*  /  Institm  eaiwdten  do  mie^aroprodttctiofw  htetoriquoo 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes  /  Notes  techniques  et  bibliographlques 


The  Institute  hat  attempted  to  obtain  the  best  original 
copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this  copy  which 
may  be  bibliographteally  unique,  which  may  alter  any  of 
the  images  in  the  reproduction,  or  which  may 
significantly  change  the  usual  method  of  filming  are 
checked  below. 

□ Coloured  covers/ 
Couvsilure  de  couleur 

□ Covers  damaged  / 
Couveiture  endommagte 

□ Covers  restored  and/or  laminated  / 
Couveiture  restaurte  et/ou  peliiculie 

I     .Cover  tide  ntissing/Le  title  de  couveiture  manque 

I       Coloured  maps  /  Carles  g^ographiques  en  couleur 

□ Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)  / 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

□ Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations  / 
Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 

□ Bound  with  other  material  / 
Belii  avec  d'autres  documents 

□ Only  edition  available  / 
Seule  Edition  disponible 

□ Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion  along 
interior  margin  /  La  reliure  serr^e  peut  causer  de 
I'ombre  ou  de  la  dislorslm  long  de  la  marge 
lrd<rieure. 

I  I  Blank  leaves  added  during  restorations  may  appear 
' — '  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these  have  been 
omitted  from  filming  /  Use  peut  que  ceriaines  pages 
blanches  ajoutdes  lors  d'une  restauration 
apparaissent  dans  le  texte.  mais,  lorsque  cela  itait 
possible,  ces  pages  n'ont  pas  i\6  film^es. 

□ Additional  comments  / 
Commenlalres  supplimenlaires: 


L'institut  a  microfilmA  le  meilteur  cxemplaire  qu'il  lui  a 
M  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  d^Iaiis  de  cet  exem- 
plaire  qui  sont  peut*£tre  unk)ues  du  point  de  vue  bibli- 
ographk^ue,  qui  peuvent  modifier  une  image  reproduHe, 
ou  peuvent  exiger  une  modification  dant  ia  mMio- 
de  nomule  de  fOmaot  aont  indqute  d-denout. 

I    I  ColoutwfpagM/Pagwdteouleur 

I    I  Pages  damaged  /  Pages  endommagdes 

□ Pages  restored  and/or  laminated  / 
Pat'ts  restaur^es  et/ou  pellicul^es 

Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed  / 
Pages  d^color^es,  tachet^es  ou  piqu^es 

j    I  Pages  detached/ Pages  ditach<M 

Showthrough/Tianspaitnca 

□ Quality  of  print  varies  / 
OuaM  Mgale  de  Umpression 

□ Includes  supplementary  material  / 
Cc^nprend  du  materiel  supplimentaire 

I  y/\  Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  e;  :<lip$, 
I — '  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  refikned  to  ensure  i.  .u  oest 
possible  image  /  Les  pages  totalement  ou 
partiellement  obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une 
pelure.  etc.,  cnt  filmitt  A  nouvratt  dt  fa^  k 
oMenir  ia  meiUeure  image  poatiUe. 

□ Opposing  pages  with  varying  colouration  or 
discolouraltons  are  filmed  tw^e  to  ensure  the  best 
possible  image  /  Les  pages  s'opposant  ayant  des 
colorations  variables  ou  des  diicoloratkms  sont 
fitm^es  deux  fois  afin  d'obtenir  la  meMeura  hnagt 
possible. 


This  Htm  ii  filmed  at  ih«  reduction  ratio  chtektd  bilow/ 
Ct  eeewntRt  ttt  tUmi  au  taux  da  rMuciiM  indiqui  el>dti*»vt. 

lOx  14x  18x   22x   26x  30x 

I   I   I   I    I    I   I   I   I    I   !✓!   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I  - 

12x  16x  20x  24x  28x  32x 


Th«  copy  fiimad  h*rt  hM  b—n  rapreducMi  thanks 
to  tho  8«n«rotitv  of: 

Stouffcr  Library 
QuMn's  University 

Th«  imagM  appearing  hara  ara  tha  baat  quality 
posaibia  considaring  tha  condition  and  lagibiiity 
of  tho  original  copy  and  In  hooping  with  tho 
fiiminB  contract  spocif icatiena. 


Original  copies  in  printed  papor  eovara  ara  filmed 
beginning  with  tho  front  cover  and  ending  on 
tho  last  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impras* 
sion,  or  the  bacic  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  ara  filmed  beginning  on  tho 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrsted  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  tho  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  Bfewtratod  improoalen. 


The  laat  recorded  frame  on  eoch  mierofleho 
Shan  contain  the  symbol        (meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  tho  symbol  V  (meaning  "£ND"). 


Mapa.  plataa.  charts,  etc..  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  bo 
ontiroly  included  in  one  expoaura  are  filmed 
beginning  In  tho  upper  loft  hand  comer,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  ss 
required.  The  following  diagrams  iliustrato  tho 
method: 


L'eiamplaira  filma  fut  raproduit  grace  i  la 
ginArositi  do: 

Stauffer  Library 
QuMii's  University 

Las  imagea  suivsntes  ont  M  reproduitea  avae  la 
plus  grand  aoin.  compta  tanu  da  la  condition  at 
do  la  netteti  do  I'oaompiaire  filma.  at  an 
conformit*  avec  loa  eenditiena  du  contrat  do 
fiimage. 

Lea  axamplairea  originaux  dont  la  couverturo  an 
papier  eat  ImprimAe  sont  filmAa  an  commoneant 
par  la  promior  plat  at  an  terminant  soit  psr  la 
darniira  page  qui  comporte  une  amprainta 
dimpreasion  ou  d'iliustration.  soit  par  la  second 
plat,  salon  le  caa.  Tous  las  autres  exemplairas 
originaua  sont  fiimte  on  commoneant  par  la 
promMro  page  qui  eomporto  uno  empreinto 
dimpreaaion  ou  d'iliustrstion  st  an  tarminant  par 
la  derniare  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 


Un  doa  aymboloa  suivants  spparaitra  sur  la 
dorniare  image  do  cheque  microfiche,  salon  le 
eaa:  la  symbolo       signifio  "A  SUIVRE".  lo 
aymbolo  ▼  algnlflo  "FIN". 

Lea  eartaa.  planches,  tableaux,  etc..  peuvent  itra 
fHmte  A  dao  taus  do  reduction  dif firants. 
Lersque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  Atro 
roproduit  en  un  soul  clich«.  ii  est  film*  «  partir 
do  i'angle  supAriour  gaucho.  do  gauche  *  droito. 
et  do  haut  en  bas.  en  prenant  la  nombre 
d'imagea  nAcessaire.  Lea  diagrammes  suivants 
Wustrontla  mithodo. 


2 


3 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

MUCROCOTY  RESOLUTION  TEST  CHART 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No.  2) 


MONUMENT  FACTS 

AND 

HIGHER  CRITICAL  FANCIES 


M^^NUMEM  FACTS 

AND 

HIGHKR  CRITICAL  FANCIES 


A.  H.  SAVCE,  LL.i).,  IID. 

I  <w*^m  or  MttmmMtr  m  ns  mwvmitiT?  of  oirono 
i  **-  tri  tnnm  Liain  ntcn  rm  /m  itst  uoanmra' 
BftMt  or  na  oui  tutamsxi,'  rrc 


FLEMING  H.  HEVrLL  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK,  CHICAGO,  TORONTO 


I 


MONUMENT  FACTS 

AND 

HIGHER  CRITICAL  FANCIES 


A.  H.  SAYCE,  LL.D.,  D.D. 

•j^filMi  99  unnetMH  n  nu  vaivutrrr  or  oxvom 
knaoa  o»  'ynn  uon  prom  nn  Avcmn  Moamam* 
tM  RAeH  ov  nu  ot»  TnMmaT,*  wn. 


FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK,  CHICAGO,  TORONTO 


4  - 


PREFACE 


Recent  archaeological  discoveries  bearing 
on  the  age  and  authenticity  of  the  Old  Testa- 
i-ient  Scriptures  have  been  so  numerous  and 
so  unexpected  that  a  brief  comparison  of  them 
with  the  results  of  the  so^lled  *  Higher 
Criticism'  is  desirable,  especially  in  view  of 
Ae  controversies  which  Professor  Friedrich 
DcUtzsch's  Ba6€l  und  Bidei  has  excited  in 
G«nnany.   It  will  be  seen  that  they  are  not 
fevourable  to  the  •  critical '  position.    In  deal- 
^wWi  them  repetitions  have  sometimes  been 
neccMMy  for  the  sake  of  the  arg-    ent  The 
woi^  •criticism/  'critical'  and  '  -itic'  have 
been  printed  between  inverted  commas  when- 
ever they  refer  tc  the  sc:  ool  of  scep'.'  al 
thwwistt  who  have  arrogated  the  title  of 
*  critia  •  to  themselves.    It  is  needless  to  add 
that  I»  fcr  one,  do  not  admit  their  right  to 
do  sa 

A.  H.  SAYCE. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

^^^uxoucAX.  Etiuiicb 

CHAPTER  U 
The  AHTiQuiTif  o»  Litbsatuu    .      .     .  . 

CHAPTER  m 
The  DBncnoK  ov  rm  TaanArmxa 

CHAPTER  IV 
The  Fourteenth  Chapter  of  Genesis  and  the 
Trustworthiness  oe  Old  Testament  Hbtoet 

CHAPTER  V 
Tos  Lavs  or  Ajauunm.  axd  not  Mosaic  . 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  Geography  of  the  Pentateuch  . 

CHAPTER  Vn 
HoKiv  Am  BmrnuM  Cemmjon  . 

CHAPTER  Vm 
The  Doctrine  or  Reuoiovs  Evolvtion 


MONUMENT  FACTS 

AMD 

HIGHER  CRITICAL  FANCIES 


CHAPTER  I 

HISTORICAL  EVIDENCE 

'pHE  Old  Testament  is  a  collection  of  anc^ 
literary  works,  and  it  was  written  by  Otiea- 
tals.  These  are  two  facts  nrfiichwiU  be  admitted 
by  every  one.  but  they  are  fects,  neverthden, 
which  once  admitted,  seem  to  be  ioime^at^ 
forgotten.   Students  and  critics,  commentatora 
and  readers  have  united  in  interpretiiw  or 
criticizing  the  books  of  the  Old  Tortament 
as  if  they  were  the  production  of  modem 
Europeans.  ,  Whether  the  object  of  the  writer 
has  been  to  defend  or  to  undermine  ^efr 
authenticity  and  trustworthiness  the  aamft 
method  has  been  employed,  the  same  poiai 
of  view  adopted,  the  same  prindplet  owoii- 
sciously  followed.  >  Critic  and  mmm^ 


10  Hiiiorkal  Evidence 


have  agreed  in  tranifonning  the  old  Hebrew 
authors  into  men  like  unto  themselves,  the 
rqxfesentatives  of  an  age  of  printbg,  of  libra- 
ries, and  oihocki  of  reference,  widi  centuries  of 
European  thought  and  prejudice  behind  them, 
and  imbued  with  all  the  intellectual  and  spiritual 
prepossessions  of  a  European  race. 

We  cannot,  however,  understand  the  literature 
of  the  Orient  aright  without  becoming  Orientals 
ourselves,  or  interpret  the  history  of  the  past 
without  divesting  ourselves  as  it  were  of  our 
modem  dress.  It  is  not  what  we  think  oug^t 
to  have  happened  which  has  really  happened  hi 
the  ander  ^East,  nor  has  ^  history  of  it  been 
recorded  in  the  manner  that  seems  to  us  most 
natimd  and  fit 

There  is  only  one  way  in  which  our  studies 
are  Kkely  to  end  in  true  results,  and  that 
is  by  exdudhig  fiem  them  as  £ur  as  possifak 
what  the  Germans  would  call  'the  suljeo- 
tive  element'  As  in  natural  sconce,  so,  too, 
in  die  sttt^  of  the  OM  Testament,  what  we 
want  are  not  tiieories,  however  ii^nenioia, 
but  hatB.  It  m  true  dial  a  fret  necessarfly 
embcdics  a  theory,  but  if  it  is  reaUy  a  fiiet  ^ 
theory  einbodied  in  it  is  merely  seooocbury  and 


rests  on  a  foundation  of  tangible  evidence. 
That  the  bronze  age  followed  the  stone  age 
may  indeed  involve  not  only  the  theory  that 
the  bronze  and  stone  implements  which  char- 
acteriite  them  have  been  made  by  man,  but  also 
that  where  two  strata  lie  one  below  the  oth 
the  uppermost  indicates  a  later  period  of  deposi- 
tioii ;  but  the  theories  are  subordinate  to 
evidence,  and  none  but  a  madman  would  think 
of  dufmting  them. 

It  is  only  where  the  evidence  is  imperfect, 
where  man  than  one  conclusion  may  be  drawn 
from  it,  that  the  theoretical  side  of  the  fact 
assumes  undue  proportions,  and  renders  the 
feet  itaelf  provisional  only.  With  the  increase 
of  evidence,  and  the  accumulation  of  fresh  data, 
the  proviiknial  nature  of  the  facts  tends  to  dis- 
appear, and  the  feet  itself  to  stand  upon  solid 
grooad 

Let  us  now  apply  &ese  truUms— for  truisms 
they  are— to  die  ancient  history  which  has  been 
traditionally  handed  down  to  us.  It  is  dear 
that  tibore  is  only  one  test  of  its  truthfulness 
wfaidi  is  scientifically  acceptable.  ^Jhat  test  is 
cooteraporaneous  evidence.^  The  evidence  may 
be  ol  vaiioas  kinds ;  the  fects  of  which  it  con- 


t2  Htelorkal  Evidciiee 


tists  may  be  literary  and  epigraphical,  or  of 
a  more  or  less  material  nature.    The  more 
material  they  are,  indeed,  the  more  certain  are 
the  conclusions  to  be  derived  from  them. 
Literary  e^ndence  may  be  explained  away  or 
misinterpreted,  inscriptions  may  be  broken  and 
impofecl;  but  the  evidence  of  potsherds  and 
foms  of  art  is  evidence  which,  once  acquired, 
is  acquired  for  ever,  and  constitutes  a  solid 
foundation  of  fact  upon  which  to  build,  c  In 
odi«r  words,  the  more  archaeological  and  the 
less  philological  our  evidence  is,  the  greater 
will  be  its  daim  to  sdentific  authority.  > 
The  reason  of  this  is  obvious.    It  is  archaeo- 
i    logy  and  not  philology  that  has  to  do  with 
history.   The  study  of  language  and  the  study 
ci  the  past  history  of  mankind  belong  to 
different  departments  of  thought.    We  cannot 
extract  history  out  of  grammars  and  diction- 
aries, and  the  attempt  to  do  so  has  always 
ended  in  failure.    In  the  early  days  of  the 
science  of  language  comparative  philologists 
fended  that  they  could  construct  the  primitive 
history  of  a  hypothetical  'Aryan  family'  upon 
the  fossilized  relics  of  Indo-European  speech, 
but  the  idyllic  picture  which  they  painted  of  the 


'Literary  Tact'  13 

'undivided'  Aryan  community  bas  long  since 
been  shattered  by  antiiropology. 

For  the  purposes  of  history  philology  can  be 
only  accidentaUy  of  service,  only  in  to  &r  as  it 
throws  light  on  the  meanii^ctf  a  Utenry  record 
or  assists  in  the  decipherment  of  an  andent 
inscription.  It  is  the  linguistic  sense  d  die 
record,  and  not  the  history  it  embodies  or  the 
historical  facts  to  be  drawn  from  it,  wtdi  whidi 
alone  philology  is  properly  concerned.  We 
must  not  go  to  it  for  dates  or  for  the  history  of 
the  development  of  civilization  and  culture. 

Still  less  can  we  look  for  help  to  what  has 
been  called  'literary  tact'  *  Literary  tact'  is 
but  another  name  for  a  purdy  sutjectiv«  im- 
pression, and  the  subjectivf^  m^namom  of 
a  modem  European  in  regard  to  andent 
Oriental  history  are  not  likdy  to  be  ctf  value 
It  is  quite  certain  rfiat  an  andent  Orieatal 
author  would  not  have  written  as  we  should 
wnte,  or  as  we  should  have  expected  him  to 
write;  and  consequently  the  very  &ct  that  aa 
andent  Oriental  document  does  not  coafefm  to 
our  modem  canons  of  critidsm  is  an  aigumei^ 
m  favour  of  its  genuineness.    A  documeat 
wntten  m  accordance  with  the  critical  require^. 


14  Historical  Evidence 


ments  of  a  German  professor  can  never  have 

come  to  us  from  the  ancient  East 

In  the  eyes,  therefore,  of  inductive  science 
there  is  only  one  admissible  test  of  the  authen- 
ticity and  trustworthiness  of  an  ancient  reconi, 
and  that  is  an  archaeological  test.  So  fiur  as 
the  historical  side  of  the  question  is  concerned 
the  philologist  pure  and  simple  is  ruled  out  of 
court  It  is  the  archaeological  evidence  of 
Egyptology  or  Assyriology,  and  not  the  philo- 
logical evidence,  which  can  alone  be  applied  to 
the  settlement  of  historical  disputes. 

This  fact  is  often  forgotten,  and  it  is  assumed 
that  every  Egyptologist  or  Assyriologist  is 
equally  a  judge  of  historical  questions.  But 
there  are  students  of  Egyptian  and  Assyrian 
who  have  devoted  themselves  only  to  the 
philological  side  of  their  subject;  and  where 
archaeology  is  involved  the  opinion  of  such 
students  is  consequently  just  as  valueless  as 
that  of  any  other  philologist  in  other  fields  of 
research.  Doubtless  wherever  literature  or 
inscriptions  are  involved  philology  supplies 
part  of  the  material  of  an  archaeological  fact  ; 
the  question,  for  example,  as  to  the  existence 
of  the  name  of  a  god  Yahum  or  Yahweh  in 


V«Iu«  of  AirfiMolofr  IS 
Babylonian  cont««,  of  the  ^  of  Al«h.n,, 
«  Pnnuriy  .  phiWogW  o»e,  but  the 

So.  too  it  i.  for  philology  to  dedde  upon  the 
"^eanmg  of  a  parage  in^,^  io,^., 
the  histoncal  bearing  and  dwe  of  tfce 
must  be  determined  by  arehaeology 

endeavoured  to  bolster  up  the  w^tae,  rf  ^ 

pMo  ogical  method  by  «,  ^  ™ 

.do«j,ne  of  evolution.  But  .8,1^!^.  th. 
^  of  htenuy  tact,'  the  appej  |,  .^I^SIb 
impressions  and  beliefs  rather thu  toTS^ 
»ny  established  6cts.  /  TlJZl£^ 
been  a  potent  factor  in  the  hittay  of  ««,  ao 
«ne  thmkerwill  deny;  the  S  B-  .Ion" 
wh.<*  ,t  ha.  moved.  itiU  mo«  the  Hue  Jone 
wh,ch  ,t  ought  «o  h«,  o„ve<l  b  .  to^f 
different  matter,  j  ' 

In  many  instances  the  proce*  of  ^.otaibu 
«  clear,  the  links  of  the  chain  p^Safc 

preserved,  and  we  can  point  o«  tli^S^ 
the  other.    But  in  ..ny  tfab  b 


( 


i6  HMoflaa  Bviteet 


impossible ;  fragments  only  of  the  chain  have 
come  down  to  us,  and  we  have  to  supply  the 
missing  links  as  best  we  may.  Sometimes  we 
can  do  so  with  certainty;  at  other  times  our 
hypothetical  chain  is  a  possibility  only. 

But  in  all  such  cases  the  existence  of  some, 
at  any  rate,  of  the  links  is  presupposed.  The 
facts  are  there ;  all  we  have  to  do  is  to  connect 
them  together.  Where  art  or  archaeol<^ 
informs  us  which  is  the  earlier  and  which 
the  later  link,  it  is  not  difficult  to  bind  them 
into  a  single  chain.  But  as  soon  as  we  leave 
the  sure  ground  of  material  facts  and  pheno- 
mena we  pass  into  a  region  of  purely  subjective 
speculation. 

That  there  is  evolution/  in  the  world  of 
thought  and  ideas  as  well  as  in  the  world  of 
material  objects  is  undeniable,  but  to  trace  the 
evdiution  generally  needs  more  knowledge  than 
we  possess.  Dr.  Newman's  epoch-making 
book  on  Tlu  Development  cf  Christian  Doctrine 
convinced  its  readers  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  deiMsbfunent  in  dogma ;  when  it  went  on  to 
assert  that  die  development  must  have  taken 
place  in  a  particular  direction,  those  only  were 
persuaded  who  were  already  disposed  to  be  so. 


True  Value  of  Evofutian  tj 

When  we  are  told  that  the  ^ffrrrinpmcnt  of 
religious  ideas  in  Isnel  or  elwwiiere  mtiit  lim 
fol.  wed  certain  lines,  we  need  only  pobt  to 
the  recent  archaeological  discoveries  wtddk  have 
shattered   similarly   eubjective  tiieoriee  of 
development  in  Egypt  and  the  eariy  GiedK 
world.    Unsupported  by  the  ardiaeoiogied 
facts  which  indicate  what  is  older  aod  what  is 
later  in  the  process  of  development,  all  theories 
about  the  evolution  of  ideas,  whether  idtgioos 
or  otherwise,  are  absolutely  valueless.  Theie 
is  no  single  line  of  growth  along  whidi  they 
must  necessarily  have  moved,  and,  apart  from 
the  archaeological  evidence,  we  can  bo  mofe  say 
that  a  particular  phase  of  faith  or  diought  has 
been  evolved  out  of  another  than,  apart  fiom 
physiology,  we  can  say  that  a  particular  form  of 
life  has  a  special  ancestry.    So  &r  as  the 
criticism  of  ancient  history  or  ancient  doea- 
ments  is  concerned,  whatever  scientific  vahie 
there  may  be  in  the  application  to  them  of 
the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  derived  M 
archaeology. 

In  dealing  with  the  history  of  the  past  we 
are  thus  confronted  with  two  utterly  opposed 
methods,  one  objective,  the  other  sulgectivei 


i8  HMofiaa  BvldtiM 


one  resting  on  a  basis  of  verifiable  facts,  the 
other  on  the  unsupported  and  unsupportable 
assumptions  of  the  modern  scholar.  The  one 
is  the  method  of  archaeology,  the  other  of 
the  so-called  'higher  criticism.'  Between  the 
two  the  scientifically  trained  mind  can  have  no 
hesitation  in  choosing. 

The  value,  indeed,  of  the  method  of  the 
'higher  criticism'  can  be  easily  tested.  We 
may  know  the  tree  by  its  fruits,  and  nowhere 
is  this  truer  than  in  the  domain  of  science. 
There  is  a  very  simple  test  which  can  be 
applied  to  the  pretensions  of  the  '  higher  critic* 
More  than  once  I  have  challenged  the  advo- 
cates of  tht  'critical  method'  to  meet  it,  but 
the  challf  ige  has  never  been  accepted. 

In  both  England  and  France  books  have  been 
published  of  late  years  which  we  know  to  have 
been  the  joint  work  of  more  than  one  writer. 
The  novels  of  Besant  and  Rice  and  of  Erck- 
mann  and  Chatrian  are  familiar  instances  in 
point  They  are  written  in  languages  which 
are  both  living,  which  embrace  vast  literatures, 
aikl  mlh  m^iidi  we  believe  ourselves  to  be 
thoroughly  acquainted.  And  yet  there  is  no 
Englishman  who  would  undertake  to  say  where 

-\  .  -ft/u^ 

-"•ML  tsH^  •irr.TC;,^  ^tel  «W«JUCf  .  ^  V^"* 


Value  of  'Critieia'  AaOyilt  19 
Betant  encb  and  Rioe  bigina  ia  aovab 
which  they  wrote  togecher,  and  no  Fraaehmaa 
who  would  venture  to  do  ao  in  the  caae  of  the 
two  French  noveliati. 

How  then  is  it  poeiible  £»r  the  Eurapeaa 
scholar  of  tcxiay  to  analyw  an  M  H^raw 
book  into  its  component  part^to  lay  down  with 
mathematical  accuncy  what  section  of  the  aame 
verse  belongs  to  one  writer,  what  to  a  aecood,  and 
what  to  a  third,  and  even  to  fix  the  lelativtt 
dates  of  these  hypothetical  authora  ?  Hebraw  ia 
a  language  that  is  very  imperfectly  known ;  It 
has  long  ceased  to  be  spdcen;  only  a  filament 
of  its  literature  has  come  down  to  11%  and  tiiat 
often  in  a  corrupt  state;  and  the  meaaiiy  of 
many  of  the  words  which  have  su:  viv«d,  and 
even  of  the  grammatical  forms,  is  oaeertab 
and  disputed.   In  fact,  it  is  just  this  fragments 
ary  and  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  language 
which  has  made  the  work  and  resulta  of  the 
higher    critici       possible.     The   *  critical' 
analysis  of  th    Pentateuch  is  but  a  measure 
of  our  ignorance  and  the  limitations  of  our 
knowledge.   What  is  impossible  in  the  case  of 
modem  English  or  French  novels  must  be  ttUl 
less  possible  in  thq  case  of  the  Old 

B  2 


^  HNtorieal  Evidence 

Scriptures.  With  fuller  knowledge  would  come 
a  recognition  of  the  futility  of  the  task. 

But  there  is  yet  another  test  to  which  we 
can  subject  the  results  of  the  'critical*  school 
There  are  cases  in  which  recent  archaeological 
discovery  has  enabled  us  to  put  them  to  the 
proof.  The  most  striking  of  these  is  the  account 
of  the  Deluge  contained  in  the  Book  of  Genesis. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  we  should  seem  to  be  justified 
in  inferring  the  existence  of  a  composite  nar- 
rative, in  which  at  least  two  stories  of  the  Flood 
have  been  mixed  or  combined  together.  But 
it  so  happens  that  a  Babylonian  story  of  the 
Flood,  which  goes  back  in  its  present  form  to 
the  age  of  Abraham,  has  been  preserved  in  the 
Chaldean  epic  of  Gilgames.  When  we  compare 
this  story  with  the  account  in  Genesis,  we  find 
that  it  agrees  not  only  with  the  so-called 
Elohistic  version,  but  with  the  so-called  Yah- 
vistic  version  as  well. 

It  thus  presupposes  an  account  of  the  Deluge 
in  which  the  'Elohistic'  and  'Yahvistic'  ele- 
ments were  already  combined  together.  And 
since  it  was  written  some  centuries  before  the 
birth  of  Moses,  there  are  only  two  ways  of 
accounting  for  the  fact,  if  the  narrative  in 


'Critical'  fiScthods  Unsound  at 

Gem»i8  isi«dlyacwi^te<me.  Either  the 
BabyUMuan  poet  had  bdbre  him  the  present 
tm  of  Genesis  or  dse  the  'Elohist'  and 
Yahvist  must  have  copied  the  Babylonian 
story  on  the  mutual  undemandmg  that  the  one 

should  insert  what  the  other  omitted.  There 
IS  no  third  alternative. 

It  follows  from  aU  diis  that  the  '  critical ' 
method  is  scientifically  unsound,  and  its  results 
accordingly  wiU  not  stand  the  application  of 
a^entific  test    It  i.  q«te  as  much  an 
artificial  creation  as  was  the  Ptolemaic  system 
of  die  umveise,  and  like  the  latter  requires 
for  ite  support  an  everincreasing  number  of 
fresh  hypoAeses  and  complicated  qualifications. 
With  Its  disappeamnce  wiU  disappear  also  the 
historical  condioona  that  have  been  derived 
from  It. 

The  vaiying  dMe.  uilgned  to  die  hypo- 
theucal  authors  of  4e  PtamtaA.  •uccessive 
State  of  religiou,  belief  »nd  a«om  opposed 
to  be  d.s«««,ble  in  it.  the  dental  of  the 
^tonoU  d»,«ter  of  the  „>n^  „ 
must  all  alike  go  with  Ae  foondttioa  of  sand 
upon  which  they  have  been  built  An  edifice 
on  tte  «u^ettive  fcneie.  M,d«««mption. 


»  Historical  Evidence 

of  the  modem  European  acfaolar  is  neoesnrOy 

a  Iiouse  of  cards. 

If  we  are  to  refuse  credit  to  the  narmttves 
of  the  Old  Testament,  it  must  be  for  some  odier 
reason  than  a  belief  that  we  can  analyze  its 
documents  into  their  component  elements,  can 
fix  the  age  and  object  of  each,  and  can  be  sure 
that  ancient  Oriental  thought  must  have  de- 
veloped  in  ona  particular  fashion  and  in  no 
other.  There  is  only  one  kind  of  evidence 
which  cau  be  admitted  for  or  against  the  history 
that  hqs  been  handed  down  to  us,  and  that  is 
the  evidence  of  archaeological  facts.  If  they 
support  it,  we  can  safely  disregard  the  specub- 
tions  of  tlie  'higher  critic';  if  thdr  testimony 
is  adverse,  we  have  something  more  substantial 
to  go  upon  than  •  litcraiy  tact '  or  a  Massoretie 
counting  of  words. 

In  default  of  facts  'criticism*  has  been  fond 
of  appealing,  in  support  of  its  negative  con- 
clusions, to  the  absence  of  documentary  evidence. 
The  story  of  the  campaign  of  the  King  of  Elam 
and  his  allies  against  the  Cmaanitish  princes, 
we  have  been  told,  must  be  pure  myth  or  fictioo, 
since  there  was  no  record  of  Babylonian  ex- 
peditions into  Palestine  in  the  patriarchal  sfe. 


^The  Aifuiiieiit  from  Silence'  a) 

But  'the  afgunieiit  from  ^koo^*  is  esacntially 
nascientffia  To  malce  our  own  ignonace  the 
measure  of  historical  credibility  is  to  adopt  die 
8al)jecttve  mediod  in  aa  extreme  §orm.  If 
there  is  OM  &ctidiicli  above  all  otiien  physical 
science  is  constaady  impressing  upon  us^  it  is 
how  litde  we  know  of  the  material  universe 
wherein  we  live ;  and  the  same  lesson  is  tanght 
by  ardiaeology  in  regard  to  the  history  of  the 
past  Time  after  time  the  most  podtive 
assertions  a  soeptiod  criticism  have  been 
disproved  by  ardiacologkal  disooviery,  events 
and  pers(Huiges  that  were  confidently  pro- 
nounced to  be  myducal  have  been  shown  to 
be  historical,  and  die  (dder  writers  have  tamed 
out  to  have  been  better  acquainted  with  what 
they  were  descfibii^  thaa  the  i?*odem  er^c 
who  has  flouted  ^em. 

As  we  shall  see»  the  eas^a^  of  Gbedop^ 
laomer  and  his  allies  has  {wmd  to  be  ao  mytib  or 
fiction,lmt  sober  fact;  the  verymunesof  ^kh^ 
vdK>  took  part  in  it  have  been  reoovefe4aad  we 
now  know  that  the  poKrical  ntaation  presnppoipt 
by  the  narrative  corresponds  eiae%  w^  the 
actoal  requirements  of  history.  It  waste  critic 
idioi«ifflistakaB,aadnottewriterfaiGiaarit. 


^  Unorkia  Evicfeaet 

Hwdly  half  a  dozen  years  ago  the  'critic' 
•«wed  lis  that  Menes,  the  founder  of  the  united 
Irai^  of  Egypt,  and  his  immediate  successors 
of  the  First  Dynasty  were  the  creations  <rf 
etymological  invention,  'semi-fabulous'  person- 
belonging  to  a  'prehistoric'  period,  of 
wh^  no  record  could  ever  have  existed.  The 
^      the  excavator  has  rudely  dissipated 
aU  soch  dr^    So  far  from  being  'semi- 
^0118  and'mythical'thekingsoftheFim 
fnf^   /^P'  ^""^         ^^ve  lived  in  the 
m  hk^  of  culture  and  history,  at  a  time  when 
^  ajillatKm  of  Egypt  was  already  old,  when 
«ti  art  w«i  highly  advanced  and  its  political 
«^m«^coinplete.  The  hieroglyphic  system 
Of  wjtong  w  already  perfected;  an  alphabet 
h«i  be«i  formed  out  of  it,  and  even  a  cursive 
hand  devdpped.     A  careful  chronological 
«P«ter  was  kept,  and,  as  in  Babylonia,  the 
«^  of  eadi  year  were  officially  recorded. 
Ev«i  Ac  tombs  of  the  '  semi-fabulous '  beings 
Of  flie  antic's  imagination  have  been  discovered 
Md  the  boaci     Menes  himself  are  now  in  the 
MnaeiimorCa&a 

If  %W  tarn  to  Babylonia,  the  same  stoiy 
««aita  at  there.   There,  too.  we  were  toW  that 


The  Excavator  at  Work  ^ 
Saigon  of  Akkad  and  liit  Km  Naiam^  were 
o^tures  of  myth,  and  diat  tiie  descripdon  of 

their  campa^ns  fai  Syria  aiid  Qfflaan,  and  of  the 
empire  they  estabfidicd  in  Wetim  Ada  was 
altogether  *  unhistoricaL'  But  once  more  the 
«cavator  has  been  at  work;  the  moniimentB 
of  Sargon  and  Naram-Sin  have  been  kwnd. 
and  written  tablets  have  been  dktnterred  dated 
m  the  years  when  Syria,  'the  land  of  the 
Amontes/ was  conquered.  Wherever  anAae- 
ology  has  been  able  to  test  the  n^ve  con- 
elusions  of  criticism,  they  have  dissdved  like 
a  bubble  into  the  air. 

The  criticism  of  the  OM  Teatameirt,  which 
has  ended  in  negation  and  prefened  Am  remits 
of  Its  own  subjective  theoristi^  to  die  external 
testimony  of  tradition,  had  a  twofold  bans.  It 
started  on  the  one  hand  from  WoTs  assumption 
that  the  use  of  writing  for  literary  purposes  was 
unknown  before  the  classical  period  of  Greek 
history,  and  on  the  other  hand  fiom  Astruc^, 
inference  that  the  employment  c^d^srent  names 
for  the  Deity  in  the  Book  ol  GeMsb  UMiieated 
diversity  of  authorship. 

It  was  in  1795  that  ^0^9.  Py^i^mmm  to 
Homer  was  pubUihed,  and  the  fonndaioos  hkl 


a6  Hbtorleal  EvBeaee 

for  that  critical  separation  of  ancient  books  into 
uieir  hypothetical  elements  which  has  since  be- 
come such  a  favourite  pastime  in  Germany.  It 
was  obvious  that  neither  the  text  nor  the  contents 
of  a  literature  which  had  been  handed  down 
orally  and  not  committed  to  writing  could  lay 
any  great  claim  to  accuracy,  and  it  was  probable 
that  the  tradition  which  assigned  it  to  a  single 
author  was  merely  a  popular  illusion.  If  writing 
was  practically  unknown  before  the  age  of 
Peisistratus  and  Solon  in  Greece,  tradition  might 
safely  be  thrown  aside,  and  a  wide  field  was 
opened  for  the  labours  and  theories  of  the  critic 
The  Conjectures  sur  la  Getikse  of  Jean  Astruc, 
Ae  French  Protestant  physician,  were  published 
anonymously  in  Paris  in  1 753.    Astruc  himself 
did  not  dispute  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  the 
Pentateuch.    But  he  maintained  that  the  use 
of  Elohim  in  some  passages  of  Genesis  and 
thatof  Yahveh  (Jehovah)  in  others  pointv-d  to 
a  duality  of  sources,  and  that  the  be  4;  inust 
have  been  written  by  Moses  in  four  paralle. 
columns,  which  were  afterwards  mixed  together 
by  ignorant  copyists. 

This  second  theory  was  soon  abandoned,  if 
indeed  it  had  ever  been  adopted  by  other 


students,  but  the  first  theory  shared  a  different 
i»te.   The  existence  of  two  names  for  God  is 
a  &ct  which,  once  pointed  out,  cannot  be  gain- 
said, and  Astruc's  explanation  of  it  became  for 
'criticism'  the  only  one.    It  was  assumed  that 
a  difference  in  the  use  of  the  Divine  Name  must 
imply  a  difference  in  authorship ;  and  when  to 
this  was  added  the  further  assumption  of  the 
late  introduction  of  the  art  of  writing,  the  future 
maidi  of  criticism  was  assured.  Tradition,  even 
the  best  attested,  had  to  make  way  before  it, 
theory  was  piled  upon  theory,  and  a  time  came 
at  last  when  hardly  any  fragment  of  ancient 
Kterature  had  escaped  the  knife  of  the  critical 
dissector,  and  the  whole  of  ancient  history,  as 
it  had  been  handed  down  to  us  before  the  age 
of  Cynis  or  the  capture  of  Rome  by  the  Gauls, 
was  wiped  out  with  a  sponge. 


CHAPTER  11 

THE  ANTIQUITY  OF  LITERATURE 

rOR  more  than  half  a  century  after  the  publi- 
cation  of  Wolfs  ProU^omena  the  assumption 
of  the  late  use  of  writing  for  literary  purposes 
was  one  which  no  one  who  pretended  to  critical 
s^^ip  ventured  to  dispute.    Among  the 
"        assumed,  it  did  not  go  back 

among 

tl«  H^)rews  only  the  more  conservative  critics 
"^^^  it  might  have  been  known  in  the 
of  Solomon.   But  even  this  concession  was 
nmvemUy  admitted,  and  BibUcal  criticism 
ended  by  denying  the  pre^xilic  origin  of  the 
tuger  part  of  the  Old  Testament  litemtt^re. 
The  «ttly  Israelites  could  not  read  or  write- 
how  Aen  could  a  mature  literature  such  as  -ve 
find  m  the  Old  Testament  have  come  into 
cwstence  at  an  early  date  ? 

But  this  supposed  late  use  of  writing  for 
Mteiary  purposes  was  merely  an  assumption. 


Wmat  not  Litt  In  DMi  39 

wttfi  nothing  more  lolid  to  rest  upon  than  the 
cntici  own  theories  and  prepossessions.  And 
as  Mon  at  it  could  be  tested  by  solid  fact  it 
orumWed  into  du«t.   First  Egyptology,  then 
Assyndogy,  showed  that  the  art  of  writing  in 
Aeancient  East,  so  far  from  being  of  modern 
growA,  was  of  vast  antiquity,  and  that  the  two 
gjfwtpowers  which  divided  the  civilized  world 
betwew  them  were  each  emphatically  a  nation 
of  •cribes  and  readers.   Centuries  before  Abra- 
ham was  bom  Egypt  and  Babylonia  were  alike 
foH  of  schools  and  UUarics,  of  teachers  and 
pupils,  of  poets  and  prose-writers,  and  of  the 
htciary  worits  which  they  had  composed. 

Egyptian  literature  goes  back  almost  to  the 
^hest  period  of  its  history.   From  the  days 
of  the  founder  of  the  First  Dynasty  onwards  the 
evente  of  each  year  of  the  king's  reign  were 
recorded  in  writing.  Notes  written  in  a  cursive 
hand  have  been  found  in  the  tombs  of  the  First 
Dynasty,  and  some  of  the  chapters  in  the  Book 
of  the  Dead-^  ftayer-book  of  the  ancient 
Egyptums-are  older  than  Kmg  Mencs  himself. 
The  tombs  and  other  monuments  (rf  tiie  Fourth 
Dynasty  show  that  a  knowledge  of  writing  was 
already  as  widely  spread  as  it  was  in  the  later 


days  of  Egyptian  hktory,  and  the  walls  of  the 
pyramid!  of  the  Fifkh  and  Sixth  Dynasties  are 
covered  with  ritual  texts  which  had  been  handed 
down  firom  a  remote  antiquity. 

The  Ph>verbt  of  Ptah-hotep,  written  in  the 
time  of  the  Fifkh  Dynasty,  remained  an  Egyptian 
daisic  and  we  may  gather  from  them  that  edu- 
cation was  generally  diffused  among  the  people. 
Indeed,  if  Vire/s  translation  can  be  trusted, 
a  sort  of  competitive  examination  was  already 
known*.   At  any  rate  the  style  of  the  book 
bebi^  to  an  advanced  period  of  literary  culture. 
It  aims  at  attracting  notice  by  its  teraeness  and 
complicated  turns,  and  by  its  departure  from  the 
language  at  once  of  ordinary  Ufe  and  of  current 
literature. 

The  Roverbs  of  >tah-hotep,  in  fact,  though 
written  more  than  five  thousand  years  ago, 
represent  the  dose  of  a  period  in  the  history 
of  Egyptian  literature.  They  had  been  pre- 
ceded by  eariier  books,  many  of  whidi  survived 
toalaterday.  One  of  them  has  come  down  to 

"Let  (the  pupil)  win  success  by  placing  himself  in  the 
first  lank;  that  is  for  him  a  position  proper  and  durable,  and 
he  hat  nothing  (further)  to  desire  for  ever/  Rtcordi  of  thi 
^«/,newaeri«,IU,p.3i(,89o).  ^ 


Educatai  Earif  31 

OMielves  in  a  mutihited  form.  It  is  a  rnond 
to^atise.  the  work  of  a  certain  Qaqcmna.  who 
hved  in  the  remote  age  of  the  Third  Dynasty 
But  even  then  there  were  aht»dy  schools  and 
libraries  in  Egypt  stored  with  papyrus  books 
written  in  a  running  hand. 

Egypt  continued  to  be  a  literary  country 
through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  its  political 
fortunes.  It  was  emphaticaUy  a  land  of  readers 
and  scribes.  The  passing  traveller  acntched 
his  name  upon  the  rocks,  and  the  smaller 
objects  of  every  day  life  were  inscribed.  The 
articles  of  toilet  that  were  made  for  die  Egyp. 
tian  lady  had  appropriate  inscriptkms  carved  or 
pamted  upon  them,  and  even  tiie  objects  diat 
lay  hidden  away  in  the  daricness  of  the  tomb 
were  covered  with  written  diaiactefs. 

Not  only  the  professional  scribes,  but  every 
one  who  pretended  to  be  a  gentleman  was 
required  to  be  educated.  The manirf business, 
the  wealthier  fellahin,  even  the  oveiseeit  of 
the  workmen,  were  expected  to  be  acquamted 
with  the  hieroglyphic  system  of  writiiig  and  the 
hieratic  or  cursive  hand  which  had  developed 
out  of  it.  The  dead  man  hunself  could  not 
pass  m  safety  through  the  perils  that  sufw 


3<       Tim  Antiquity  of  Utcrtture 

rounded  him  on  his  entrance  into  the  odicr 
world,  unless  he  could  read  the  inscriptions  on 
the  walls  of  his  sepulchre  or  the  ritual  of  the 
dead  which  was  buried  with  him. 

And  the  literature  with  which  the  libraries 
of  Egypt  were  stocked  was  of  the  most  varied 
character.    Even  the  historical  novel  was  its- 
presented  in  it,  as  well  as  political  satires  and 
books  of  travel.     One  of  the  most  popular 
books  written  in  the  reign  of  the  Pharaoh  of 
the  Oppression  is  a  sarcastic  account  of  the 
adventures  of  an  Egyptian  official  in  Palestine. 
No  one,  in  short,  could  live  in  Egypt  without 
wming  under  the  spell  of  its  literary  culture. 
Written  characters  literally  stared  him  in  tixe 
lace  on  every  side,  and  all  who  were  in  any 
connected  with  the  government  were 
obliged  to  read  and  understand  them. 
^  The  literary  culture  of  Egypt  has  its  parallel 
m  Babylonia.    There  too  we  find  a  land  of 
bodes  and  schools  and  libraries  and  a  nation  of 
readers  and  writt.-s.    Babylonia  was  a  great 
commercial  community,  and  for  the  purposes  of 
trade  a  knowledge  of  reading  and  writing  was 
required  among  all  classes  who  took  part  in  it 
From  a  remote  antiquity  not  only  schools  but 


Ubrariet  at  weU  had  been  ettabUdied  in  the 
numeroui  dtiet  of  the  oonntry,  and  at  in 
Sgypt*  to  too  in  Babylonia,  the  Utenture 
represented  in  them  was  of  tiie  moat  varied 

description. 

The  cuneiform  charaeten  (tf  Babykmk  wera 
for  more  difficult  to  learn  than  the  hieroglypha 
of  Egypt.   They  were»  in  fiust,  a  hieratic  or 
cursive  hand  developed  at  an  eariy  date  out  of 
hieroglyphs  of  which  but  Urn  tiacet  have  eome 
down  to  us.   There  was  consequently  nothing 
in  their  forms  to  assist  the  memory,  any  mm 
than  there  is  in  the  form  of  Chhiese  characters 
to-day.  Moreover,  they  had  been  the  hivention 
of  a  people  who  spoke  an  agglutinative  kn- 
guage,  like  that  of  th*?  Turitt  or  Finns,  and 
who  had  been  subsequendy  sup^anted  by 
Semites.     When  accordingly  the  Semites 
adopted  and  adapted  the  old  writmg  of  the 
country  along  with  the  rert  of  its  civilisation 
they  found  it  necessary  to  learn  the  Umguage 
which  the  writing  embodied.     There  waa 
already  a  large  literature  composed  in  it,  and 
even  after  the  Semitic  occupation  it  long  re- 
mained the  language  of  those  two  conservative 
branches  of  study,  law  and  rdigioiu 


34        The  Antiquity  of  Uterature 

Babylonian  education  thus  included  not  only 
a  knowledge  of  the  complicated  cuneiform 
agns,  but  also  of  the  language  of  the  older 
Sumenan  population.     Sumerian  became  to 
the  Semitic  Babylonian  what  Latin  was  to  the 
mediaeval  European,  the  foundation  and  back- 
ground of  his  literary  education,  the  language 
of  religion  and  law.  and  even  of  a  part  of  the 
literature  which  he  was  required  to  know. 

What  years  of  patient  labour  all  this  implies 
niay  easily  be  conceived.  An  old  Sumerian 
proverb,  used  as  a  text  for  a  copybook,  declared 
that  he  who  would  live  in  the  school  of  the 

^^ZTl/T  '        'he  exer. 

«se  book,  of  Babylonian  learners  who  lived 
before  Abiaham  was  born  have  recently  been 
found  by  the  American  excavators  at  Nippur 
fa  Northern  Babylonia.    The  pupil  was  fi'st 
teught  how  to  form  his  chamcters,  then  he 
<»mmitted  them  to  memory  from  lists  in  which 
^ey  were  arranged  according  to  their  forms. 
For  the  acqmsmon  of  Sumerian  he  had  mm- 
^  and  dictionaries,  vocabularies,  phrase- 
books  and  mteriinear  translations,  as  well  as 
gi^matical  analyses  and  explanations  of 
difficult  passages. 


Bdbyloiiian  Education  35 

But  even  with  all  this  the  young  Babylonian 
had  iar  creator  difS^ulties  to  contend  against 
than  the  /oung  Englishman  of  to-day  with  his 
simple  al  phabet  of  cwenty-six  letters,  but  they 
were  difficulties  which  had  to  be  overcome 
before  he  could  even  read  the  deed  in  which 
he  leased  his  house  or  bought  his  wool.  That 
education  should  nevertheless  have  been  so 
widely^  diffused  in  Babylonia  as  we  now  know 
It  to  have  been,  women  as  well  as  men  sharing 
m  It,  is  a  truly  astonishing  fact.    The  Baby- 
lonia of  the  age  of  Abraham  was  a  more 
highly  educated  country  than  the  England  of 
George  III. 

'Criticism'  so-called  met  the  great  fact  of 
the  advanced  literary  culture  of  ancient  Egypt 
and  Babylonia  by  either  ignoring  or  minimizing 
or  dcnymg  it  altogether.   As  late  as  1862,  Sir 
George  Comewall  Lewis  denied  it  \  ai: J  as'kte 

.  ^tr^^^'T'f  ^"'^^  Astronomy  of  the  Ancients  : 
Whoever  calmly  considers  the  long  possession  of  Eim)t  by 
^  two  »o«  dvill^d  ««ion.  of  «tiqui.y.  while  the^ 
language  and  writing  of  the  .ndeiit  B^ptfiui,  ^ereiS 
P«petuated  by  an  unbroken  tradition,  will  be  dow  to  belief. 

mnoMiaed  iniMched,  or  that  they  would  have  been  left 
to  be  opened      the  hbofiosi  investigation  of  modem 

c  a 


36        The  Antiquity  of  Uterattire 

as  1871  the  eminent  Semitic  scholar  Professor 
Ndldeke  declared  that  the  results  of  Assyrio- 
Ip^  in  both  linguistic  and  historical  matters 
had  '  a  highly  suspicious  air.'  It  was  subjective 
theory  against  objective  fact,  and  in  accordance 
with  the  usual '  critical '  method  fact  had  to  «ve 
way  to  theory.  * 

But  facts  are  stubborn  things,  and  gradually 
the  aonimulation  of  them  forced  an  unwilling 
and  half-hearted  assent  from  the  disciples  of 
the  cntical  method.'  At  last,  in  1887.  came 
a  discovery  which  revolutionized  our  concep- 
toons  of  ancient  Oriental  history,  and  made 
toe  assumption  of  ancient  Oriental  illiteracy 
henceforth  an  impossibility.    This  was  the 

S^tof    .     .  u''  discoveries  of  Z 

r^o^^^  •»  those  which  have  hitherto  attended  their  ill- 

Slttr'  t'^'^"^-^'^-^'^)-  'Itmustnot^ 
assumed  that  any  authentic  memorials  of  the  early  Aaswian 

tected  ttttr  mfonnat.on.    Oral  tradition  would  not  have 

and  we  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  contemporan^ 
ch^mdes  or  registers  of  a  historical  nature.'had  been'Tm^ 


Tel  el'Amania  TaUitU  37 

<ii8covery  of  the  cuneiform  tablets  of  Tel  el- 
Amarna. 

Td  el-x  jnama  marics  the  «te  of  a  city  which 
stood  on  tile  eastern  bank  of  the  Nile,  midway 
between  the  modem  towns  of  Minia  and  Assist. 
It  was  biult  by  Amon-hotep  IV,  one  of  the  last 
kings  of  the  Eighteenth  Egyptian  Dynasty. 
Bom  of  an  Asiatic  mother,  and  himself  a  philo- 
sopher and  visionary,  he  endeavoured  to  reform, 
or  rather  to  abolish,  the  state  religion  of  Egypt, 
of  which  he  was  himself  the  official  head,  and 
to  replace  the  worship  of  Amon  of  Thebes  by 
a  sort  of  pantheistic  uionotheism.   For  Amon- 
hotep  there  was  but  one  God,  the  creator  and 
upholder  of  aU  things,  and  in  whom  all  things 
exist.   Omnipresent,  omniscient,  and  all-good 
the  visible  symbol  of  this  one  God  was  the 
solar  disk. 

But  the  reforming  efforts  of  tfie  Pharaoh 
met  with  fierce  opposition,  and  in  spite  of  per- 
secution the  foUowera  of  Amon  succeeded  in 
holding  their  own  agamst  '  the  heretic  king/ 
He  retired  northwards  fiom  Thdbes,  the  capital 
of  his  fathers,  and  founded  a  sew  capital  where 
the  mounds  of  Tel  d-Amama  now  Une  the 
nverbank.  Here  he  erected  a  temple  for  h» 


38  Antfffrfty  ol  Uiwrtow 

^  for  himself,  and  here  he  died 
by  the  adherents  of  the  new  faith. 

fr""  Canaan  and  othe^ 
of  W«tem  Asia,  to  whom  he  had^ 
•rusted  the  higher  offices  of  state. 
When  he  died  religious  and  civil  war  was 
out  throughout  the  land.    It  was  not 

A^^!^.  1"*"°""'  triumphant; 
Ae  aty  of  the  heretic  Phamoh,  with  the  temple 

mummy  of  the  Pharaoh  itself  dragged  from  its 
sepulchre  and  torn  into  fragments.  The  city 
rfKWAt™.  'the  glory  of  the  Solar  Disk,' as 
titePhjwoh  had  renamed  himself,  lasted  hardly 
more  than  djirty  years. 

But  whae  it  la«ed  the  Egyptian  Foreign 
Offi«  wa.  tranrffcrrea  to  it  from  Thebes.  Z 
MJ^ve  correspondence  carried  on  with  the 
EWPtan  govenHW.  and  vassal  princes  in  the 
«  iS!  Zt^  Via,  as  wel 

A"^  °^  ^"y'"""'  Assyria,  Meso- 
potw...  „d  Asia  Minor.   It  is  this  co.;espon- 

wh«4  h«l  been  brought  from  Thebes,  which 
was  discovered  in  1887. 
The  moM  astonishing  and  unexpected  iact 


Tht  Bihfkoka  Laafuage  39 

about  this  correspondence  is,  that  it  is  in  the 
cuneiform  script  of  Babylonia  and  for  the  most 
part  in  the  Babylonian  language.    It  proves 
Aat  the  Babylonian  language  was  to  such  an 
extent  the  language  of  diplomacy  and  inter- 
national intercourse  that  even  the  Egyptian 
court  had  to  use  it  when  corresponding  with  its 
Asiatk:  provinces.     It  also  proves  that  the 
culture  and  political  ascendency  of  Babylonia 
had  exercised  so  long  and  so  permanent  an 
influence  upon  Western  Asia  as  to  impose 
upon  It  the  language  and  syllabary  of  the 
dom-nant  state.    Throughout  Western  Asia 
there  must  have  been  schools  and  libraries 
like  those  of  Babylonia  itself,  in  which  the 
literature  of  Babylonia  was  studied,  and  its 
language  and  system  of  writing  taught  and 
learned. 

The  correspondence  further  shows  that 
letters,  in  what  to  most  of  the  writers  was 
a  fore^  tongue  and  script,  were  constantly 
pM«ng  backwards  and  forwards  along  the 
high-roads  o£  trade  and  war.  The  subjects 
of  them  were  often  trivial;  and  some  of  them 
were  written  by  Bedouin  chiefs  as  well  as  by 
wwoen.   The  writers,  in  learning  the  Baby- 


♦>       The  Aattjuity  of  Ltteratui* 

Ionian  script  and  language,  had  at  the  same 
bme  to  acquire  a  Icnowledge  of  Babylonia, 
Ijterature.   Among  the  clay  tablets  found  at 
i  el  el-Amarna  are  fragments  of  mythological 
poems  m  wh.ch  the  words  have  been  di,fded 
from  one  another  in  order  to  assist  the  learner 
and  the  legal  code  of  Khammu-rabi  recentl^ 
discovered  makes  it  clear  that  Babylonian  law 
also  was  known  in  the  West. 

The  Mosaic  age,  therefore,  instead  of  beinjr 
an  Illiterate  one,  was  an  age  of  high  literary 
«tiy.ty  and  education  throughout  the  civilized 
East     Not  only  was  there  a  widespread 

w^TlVj'"'*  ^SyP'  '""^  Babylonia 

whch  had  .ts  roots  in  a  remote  pas(  but 

du»  culture  was  shared  by  Mesopotamia  and 
^pSne."'  more  especially  by  SyrU 

Palestine,  in  fact,  was  the  meeting-place  of 
the  two  great  powers  of  the  Oriental  world, 
«nd  had  long  been  under  the  influence  of  the 
of  literary  culture  which  flowed  bom 
K  The  'nfluence  of  Babylonian  culture 
must  have  been  felt  in  it  at  least  as  early 

corporated  .t  «to  his  empire  centuries  before 


E»Iy  Systems  of  Writing  4, 

the  birth  of  Abraham;  the  recent  excavation, 
at  G^er  have  shown  that  monuments  inscribed 
with  Egyptian  hieroglyphs  were  erected  on  its 
sou  m  the  period  of  the  Twelfth  Dynasty. 

But  this  is  not  all.  Thanks  to  the  dis- 
~vcnes  of  Dr.  A.  J.  Evans  and  others  in 
Krete,  we  now  know  that  long  before  the  a« 
of  Moses  there  was  an  advanced  lite,^ 
culture  m  what  was  to  be  in  after  days  th; 

world,  and  that  the  hieroglyphs  of 
Egypt  and  the  cuneiform  characters  of  Baby- 
lonia  were  not  the  only  systems  of  writi4 
which  were  in  vogue.  In  Krete  itself  there  wt« 
Aree,  ,f  not  four,  wholly  different  systems,  one 
insisting  of  pictographs.  the  others  of  Hnear 
««wactcr3  which  represented  syllables 

One  of  these  latter  systems  was  widely  used. 
Insmptions  in  it  have  been  found  in  the  island 
of  Melos  as  well  as  at  Mykenae  and  Orcho- 
menos  in  Greece;  some  of  its  characters  are 
impressed  on  the  Amoritish  potsherds  dis- 
inttwed  at  Lachish  in  Palestine;  and  the 
J^l«ry  of  Cyprus,  inscriptions  in  which  have 
been  discovered  at  Troy  and  in  Jerusalem,  was 
but  a  local  form  of  it  In  the  'Palace  of 
Minos  at  Knossos  hundreds  of  clay  tablets 


42       Tilt  AnMqiilty  ol  Utenrtoff 
have  been  disinterred,  the  majority  of  which 
tie  older  than  the  Mosaic  age.  and  all  alike 
are  covered  with  the  characters  of  this  stiU 
undeciphered  script.    From  one  end  of  the 
civilized  ancient  worid  to  the  other  men  and 
women  were  reading  and  writing  and  corre- 
sponding with  one  another;  schools  abounded 
and  great  libraries  were  formed,  in  an  age 
which  the  'critic'  only  a  few  years  ago  dog- 
matically  declared  was  almost  wholly  illiterate. 

The  second  assumption,  then,  upon  which 
the  method  and  results  of  the  '  higher  criticism ' 
rest  has  been  disproved  by  archaeological 
rese^.    Moses  not  only  could  have  written 
the  Pentateuch,  but  it  would  have  been  little 
rfjort  of  a  miracle  had  he  not  been  a  scribe. 
He  had  been  brought  up  in  the  Pharaoh's  court 
be  ims  a  Jaw-giver.  and  the  elders  and  over- 
•eew  of  his  brother  Israelites  in  the  land  of 
would  have  been  required  to  know 

WlLT*.*""^  Egypt,  where  the 

Iwaehte.  dwelt  so  long  and  from  which  they 
fled,  was  a  knd  of  writing  and  literature,  and  tlie 
Q«aan  which  they  invaded  was  e-  .n  more  so. 
For  here  three  literary  cultures  met.  as  it  were 
together-thc  culture  and  script  of  Egypt,  the 


AWwn'*  a  Umry  Age  43 

«dtu«  Md jrtpt  of  Babylonia,  and  the  cultB« 
««d«ipt  of  the  Philistines  from  Krete 

Tie  very  potters  scratched  written  cha^s 
*«.  and  ««,et.n.es  words  or  names,  not  only  on 
^I»tteor  of  Egypt  but  upon  that  of  CaLn 
"d  of  Mek*  In  Palestine  the  handles  of 
»ej»w  woe  impressed  with  the  hieroglyphic 

atjd  el-Anunu m Egypt  The civili Jworld 

^"^fL  ""^  »  of 

^  extended  even  to  the  classes  of  the 

PoP-l^wnwl^were  engaged  in  manual  labour. 
tL^^"  Crusaders  in 

^^»nte.  and  4e  Greek  and  Carian  mer^ 
«««  of  U«  Pha™>h  Psammetichus,  who 
«^  their  lei«.„  «  Abu  Simb^l  in 
T^JlTl^  with  inscriptions  at 

dJTL!?^  JIf^«  *°  hypothesis, 
Ae  Greek  •oridwa.WillilJito,.,.   We  have 

IW.  but  .t.  eh«fa,  le»on  has  been  that  the 

:s2r:ii:;ra„*^«^r:^'''^' 

—  wwwj  an  age  as  our  own. 


CHAPTER  in 


THE  DISSECTION  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH 

•T^HEhirtcirian  if  necewarily  a  compiler.  He 
has  to  gather  his  materials  from  all  sides,  and 
In  so  &r  as  they  are  literary  his  woric  must  be 
to  a  certain  extent  a  literary  compilation.  The 
audior  of  the  Books  of  Kings  tells  us  what  some 
of  the  so  «s  were  from  idiich  his  narrative  has 
been'dertved;  they  were  the  book  o(  the  Acts 
of  Solomon,  and  the  official  Annals  (d  the  Kings 
of  JudaK  and  Israel  Other  ccmtemporaneous 
sources  are  ^  imed  by  the  dironicler--the  book 
of  Nathan  cne  prophet,  the  prophecy  of  Ahijah, 
the  Visions  and  Commentary  of  Iddo  die  seer, 
tiie  Genealos^  of  Shemaiah  and  Iddo,  tiie 
Hlstwy  of  Jehu  the  son  of  Hanani,  'who  is 
mentioned  in  the  book  of  the  Kings  of  Israel,' 
and  the  Vision  of  Isaiah. 

Extracts  from  similar  sources  can  be  detected 
even  in  the  Pentateuch ;  die  list  of  the  kings  of 
Edom,  for  examf^,  given  in  the  thirty«xdi 


Early  HIstoriant  Compilers  45 

chapter  of  Genesis,  moatlhave  been  tekm  horn 
the  state  annals  oi  the  country,  and  the  itiaefiry 
of  the  Israelites  in  the  thirty^hifd  chapter  of 
Numbers  implies  an  official  and  ooittenpor- 
aneous  record.  As  we  shall  aee^  the  Moooat 
of  the  campaign  of  Chedor-hu>iiier  and  his  aUiea 
which  we  find  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of 
Genesis  must  have  been  derived  from  a  Baby- 
lonian document. 

But  because  the  historian  is  a  compiler  it  does 
not  follow  that  he  is  a  divided  peraooaHty. 
Herodotus  has  embodied  in  his  history  ntimefoiia 
quotations  and  extracts  from  his  predecessors, 
but  for  all  that  he  was  a  single  individual,^ 
not  a  collection  of  different  writer*  Uvmg  at 
differentperiods  of  Greek  history  whom  tradition 
has  comprehended  under  one  name.  Priataig 
has  made  us  so  familiar  with  footnote  reference* 
and  marks  of  quotation  that  we  fail  to  realiie 
how  difficult  it  was  for  an  ancient  author  to 
indicate  exactly  where  he  himself  was  speaking 
and  where  he  was  borrowing  from  othen.  The 
fear  of  plagiarism  was  not  before  his  eyes  so 
constantly  as  it  is  before  the  eyes  of  those  who 
live  in  an  age  of  printing-presses  and  reviewers. 
There  are,  nevertheless,  moderalbo^  iditdi 


46    Tin  Dlmrtlou  ol  iht  ^HaHuch 

illustrate  the  method  of  the  ancients.  Little 
more  than  half  a  century  ago,  for  instance, 
Bayle  St  John  wrote  an  account  of  his  visit 
to  Egypt,  in  which  he  incorporated  long  extracts 
from  the  works  of  other  travellers  without  adding 
miriti  of  quotation,  or  indeed  anything  that 
would  nable  the  reader  to  distinguish  between 
hit  own  nftmtive  and  rhat  of  earlier  writers. 
Had  such  a  book  been  included  in  the  Old 
Testament  Canon,  and  the  older  books  from 
wWdi  it  has  been  borrowed  been  known,  the 
'critic'  wodd  have  triumphantly  pointed  to  it 
M  an  indisputabte  example  of  composite  author- 
■h^   And  yet  it  is  really  the  work  of  a  single 
audior,  and  the  greater  part  of  it  is  devoted  to 
Ae  story  of  hh  own  individual  experiences. 

Ardiaeology  has  Aimished  us  with  the  means 
crfachttlly  testingthevalueof  the  'critical'  theory 
fVniing  the  oompontion  of  die  Pentateuch. 
If  tbere  is  any  portion  <rf  it  in  which  the  sap- 
posed  fret  oi  divided  aatfaorship  seems  clearest, 
It  is  the  narrative  oi  the  Deluge.  Here,  if  any- 
where, we  seem  to  have  evidence  of  a  double 
version  of  ti>  '  story,  the  two  sections  of  which 
can  be  distinguished  from  one  another,  and 
liWch  appear  to  be  cfaarKterised  not  only  by 


Epic  of  Gilfamcg  47 

a  different  phraseology  bi^  by  »  ^mtat  Moowit 
of  the  catastrophe  as  weH  ibid  yet,  as  !»• 
already  been  said,  the  Bibyiodba  slofy  oT  the 
event  goes  to  show  that  sttch  evMeoee  is  meiely 
illusive.  The  twofold  dcscr^tieii  of  Ae  Rood 
in  Genesis  is  like  the  twofold  text  it  has 
been  proved,  is  discovcraWc  in  soae  of 
works  of  Dean  Stanley  wiien  the  *cr^ 
method'  is  applied  to  them*. 

The  Tibylonian  story  »      «ott  coi^ilete 
form  is  contained  in  the  gici   rk^u^m  ^ 
of  Gilgames.   It  there  occupies  die  kiger  pofb 
tion  of  the  eleventh  bode,  and  is  lepiMiited  m 
being  told  to  the  Babylonian  hero  by  Xknthroi^ 
the  Babylonian  Noah,  himself.  Ae  the  epic  waa 
composed  in  the  age  of  Abraham,  the  cpiaode 
of  the  Deluge  which  has  thus  been  mttodneed 
into  it  must  go  bade  to  at  least  aa  eaily  a  dale. 

Now  when  we  compare  the  Bab^ooitti  atoty 
with  the  account  in  Gcnesiawe  M  it  doaa 
not  agree  with  only  one  or  ote  of  the  two 
versions  which  criticism  has  <S8Covered  «id 
distinguished  in  the  Biblical  narrative^  hm  with 
both.   Like  the  'Elohist'  it  makes  Xttntew 

(Montred,  1895).  ./'^mvm 


48    Tlie  Disseetbn  of  tiie  Pentateuch 

the  tenth  in  descent  from  the  first  man,  it 
ascribes  the  Flood  to  the  sins  of  mankind,  and 
the  preservation  of  Xisuthros  to  his  piety ;  it 
asserts  that  all  living  things  were  destroyed 
except  such  as  had  found  shelter  in  the  ark; 
it  states  that  the  approach  of  the  catastrophe 
was  revealed  to  Xisuthros  by  the  god  Ea,  who 
instructed  him  how  to  build  the  ark,  which  was 
divided  into  rooms  and  storeys,  provided  with 
a  window,  and  pitched  within  and  without ;  it 
tells  us  that  'the  seed  of  life  of  all  kinds'  was 
taken  into  the  vessel,  along  with  the  famjly  of 
Xisuthros,  and  that  the  waters  covered  '  all  the 
high  mountains';  and,  finally,  that  when  the 
Deluge  had  subsided  and  Xisuthros  had  offered 
a  sacrifice  on  the  summit  of  the  mountain,  the 
god  Bel  blessed  him  and  promised  that  he  would 
never  again  destroy  the  world  by  a  flood,  while 
the  goddess  I  star  'uplifted'  the  rainbow,  which 
an  old  Babylonian  hymn  calls  '  the  bow  of  the 
Deluge.' 

Like  the  'Yahvist,'  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Babylonian  story  sees  in  the  Flood  a  punish- 
ment for  sin,  and  makes  it  destroy  all  living 
things  which  were  not  in  the  ark ;  it  describes 
how  Xisuthros  sent  forth  three  birds,  the  swallow, 


Iioe  Three  BMs  49 

the  dove,  and  the  raven,  to  discover  if  die  waters 
had  subsided  from  the  earA,  and  tiiat.  while  the 
dove  turned  back  to  die  ark,  the  raven  flew 
away;  and  it  states  that  after  the  descent  from 
the  vessel  Xisudiros  built  an  altar,  and  offered 
sacrifice  on  the  peak  of  die  mountain  where  it 
had  rested,  and  where  die  gods  *  smelt  the  sweet 
savour'  <rf the  offering. 

The  three  birds  of  the  Babylonian  story 
explain  why  it  is  diat  in  die  BibUcal  version 
die  dove  is  mentioned  twice,  diough  commen- 
tators  bng  ago  suspected  diat  diree  biids  must 
originaUy  have  been  named.  Nor  is  diis  all. 
The  Biblical  writer  must  have  had  die  Baby- 
loniaa  version  before  him— if  not  in  its  literary 

form,  at  all  events  in  some  shape  or  odier-^or 
he  has  dehberatdy  excluded  and  implicidy  con- 
tradicted  die  po^dsdc  elements  contained  in 
it   The  swaUow  is  omitted  because  its  name, 
•  the  bird  of  desdny,'  brought  widi  it  super- 
stitious and  idolatrous  associations ;  die  Deluge 
is  not  die  woric  of  one  god,  Bel,  and  die  pre- 
servation of  Xisudiros  die  woric  of  anodier,  Ea, 
as  die  Bal^lonian  account  averred,  but  die 
punishment  of  mankind  and  die  revdataon  of 
the  Gcmiiiig  catastro^e  to  die  righteous  man 


50    The  Dissectiofi  <rf  the  Pentateuch 

are  alike  due  to  the  One  God,  whether  He  be 
addressed  as  Elohim  or  as  Yahveh ;  while  the 
statement  of  the  Babylonian  poet  that  the  door 
of  the  ark  was  shut  by  Xisuthros  himself  is 
directly  negatived  by  the  Biblical  writer,  who 
asserts  that  it  was  that  One  God  who  closed  it 
If,  then,  the  Babylonian  account  of  the  Deluge 
agrees  with  the  Biblical  version  as  a  whole,  and 
not  with  one  or  other  of  the  component  parts 
into  which  it  has  been  separated  by  criticism— 
and  such,  ac  we  have  seen,  is  the  case-— and  if, 
as  is  also  the  case,  this  Babylonian  account  goes 
back  to  an  age  long  anterior  to  that  of  Moses, 
only  one  conclusion  is  possible.    Even  the  nar- 
rative in  which  the  marks  of  composite  author- 
ship seem  clearest  is  not  really  composite,  at 
any  rate  in  the  sense  in  which  the  term  is 
understood  by  'criticism.'    The  other  alter- 
native, that  the  'Elohistic'  and  'Yahvistic' 
elements  already  existed  in  the  Babylonian 
version,  is  one  that  no  Assyriologist  would 
accept,  nor  would  it  assist  the  '  critical '  position, 
as  the  Babylonian  version  had  assumed  its 
present  form  before  the  Mosaic  age. 

But  we  can  go  yet  a  step  further.  When  we 
compare  the  Biblical  with  the  Babylonian  account 


'The  Sfirtr  of  Qihrc 


of  the  Flood,  we  find  that 


5t 

.     ,     ^   geographical  set- 

tmgr  has  been  changed.    It  is  true  that  the  ark 
»  made  to  rest  on  one  of  the  mountains  of 
Anwat,  but  in  other  respects  it  has  been  given 
a  Palestinian  colouring.    Not  only  is  the  name 
^the  rescued  patriarch  no  longer  Xisuthros  or 
Utu-napistim  but  Noah,  and  the  vessel  itself 
has  been  changed  from  a  ship  into  an  ark. 
Unlike  Babylonia  or  Egypt,  Canaan  possessed 
no  great  rivers;  its  population  except  in  the 
Phoenician  cities  of  the  coast,  was  essentially 
inland  and  unacquainted  with  the  art  of  ship- 
buikMng.    The  sprig  of  olive  brought  back  by 
&e  dove  to  the  ark  is  another  indication  of 
Western  influence,  for  the  olive  was  a  tree 
of  Palestine  and  not  of  Babylonia.    Still  more 
sigmficant  is  the  difference  in  the  chronology 
and  calendar  of  die  two  versions.    The  rainy 
season  of  Babybnia  was  the  month  Sebet,  our 
January  and  February,  and  it  was  in  Sebet, 
therefore,  that  the  Flood  was  believed  to  have 

^*         ''^  ^^"^^'^       '•^'"y  "months 
were  October  and  November,  when  the  autumn 
ot  'fiMrmer-  rains  fall,  and  March,  with  the 
totter  rains  of  spring.  In  the  Book  of  Genesis 
•acwdingly,  'the  fountains  of  the  great  deep* 

D  3 


52    The  Dissectioa  of  the  Pentateuch 

are  said  to  have  been  broken  up  and  'die 
windows  of  heaven  opened'  in  'the  second 
month '  of  the  Hebrew  year,  that  is  to  say,  at 
the  end  of  October,  while  the  subsidence  of  the 
waters  began  in  the  middle  of  the  seventh 
month,  when  the  rains  of  spring  would  be  over. 

The  conclusion  which  follows  is  obvious. 
Not  only  does  the  Babylonian  story  of  the 
Deluge  agree  with  that  of  Genesis  as  a  whote, 
and  thus  utterly  ignore  the  distinctive  elemoits 
which  criticism  has  laboured  to  point  out  within 
it;  it  further  shows  that  the  story  must  have 
been  known  and  modified  in  Canaan  before  it 
found  a  place  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  How 
this  should  have  been  the  case  we  have  again 
learnt  from  archaeological  discovery. 

The  Tel  el-Amama  tablets,  which  have 
revealed  to  us  the  literary  activity  and  wide- 
spread education  of  the  Mosaic  age,  have  also 
shown  that  Babylonian  literature  was  studied 
in  the  schools  of  Canaan.  Even  in  distant 
Egypt,  in  the  Foreign  Office  of  the  Pharaoh, 
as  we  have  seen,  fragments  have  been  dis- 
covered of  Babylonian  legends,  with  the  words 
separated  from  one  another  for  the  a«<yiiitanfft 
of  the  foreign  reader.  The  Babylonian  aoeount 


A  PliilolQfied  libige  53 

of  Ac  great  catastrophe  which  had  once 
•wept  over  the  civilized  earth  must  have  been 
known  in  Canaan  long  before  Moses  was  born. 
Indeed,  it  must  have  been  familiar  to  Abraham 
himself  before  he  migrated  from  Ur.  In  the 
•critical'  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  Biblical 
narrative  archaeology  thus  compels  us  to  see 
only  a  phikrfogical  minige. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  FOURTEENTH  CHAPTER  OF  GENESIS 
AND  THE  TRUSTWORTHINESS  OF 
OLD  TESTAMENT  HISTORY 

JN  1869  the  great  Semitic  scholar,  Professor 
^  NiJldeke,  published  a  treatise  on  the  '  Un- 
historical  character  of  the  fourteenth  chapter 
of  Genesis He  declared  that  'criticism' 
had  for  ever  disproved  its  claim  to  be  historical. 
The  political  situation  presupposed  by  it  was 
incredible  and  impossible ;  at  so  distant  a  date 
Babylonian  armies  could  not  have  marched  to 
Canaan,  much  less  could  Canaan  have  been 
a  subject  province  of  Babylonia.  The  whole 
story,  in  fact,  was  a  fiction  based  upon  the 
Assyrian  conquest  of  Palestine  in  later  days. 
The  names  of  the  princes  commemorated  in  it 
were  etymological  inventions ;  eminent  Semitic 
philologists  had  already  explained  those  of 
Chedor-Iaomer  and  his  allies  from  Sanskrit,  and 

*  Vntertuchungen  zur  Kriiik  Jes  alten  Testaments,  Abhand- 
lung  III,  pp.  ,56-172  (Kiel,  1869),  and  JahrbUchtr  fUr 
wissenschaftliche  Theologie  (1870),  pp.  213  et  seq.  On  the 
'  Iranian '  origin  of  Babylonian  names  see  Renan,  HuMrt 
g/n/rale  des  Langues  s^mitiques,  pp.  62-64. 


A  Lost  History  RcoomMl  55 

those  of  the  Canaanitish  princes  were  derived 
from  the  events  in  which  they  were  supposed 
to  have  borne  a  part 

This  was  in  1869.   In  1903  'criticism'  is 
discreetly  sUent  about  the  conclusions  which 
it  then  announced  with  so  much  assurance.  In 
the  interval  the  excavator  and  archaeologist 
have  been  hard  at  work,  regardless  of  the  most 
certainly  ascertained  results  of  '  critidsm,'  and 
the  ancient  worid  of  Western  Asia  has  risen 
again  from  the  grave  of  centuries.   A  history 
which  had  seemed  lost  for  ever  has  been 
"covered  for  us»  and  we  can  now  handle  and 
read  the  very  letters  which  passed  between  the 
contemporaries  <rf  Abtaham.  We  now  know 
ahnost  as  much,  m  fact,  about  die  Babylonia 
of  the  age  of  Abraham  as  we  do  about  the 
Assyria  of  the  age  of  Isaiah  or  about  the  Greece 
of  the  age  of  Perikles. 

And  the  increase  of  knowledge  has  not  been 
fevourable  to  the  results  of 'criticism.'  It  has 
proved  them  to  be  nothing  but  the  baseless 
fabric  of  subjective  imagination.  It  is  the 
Book  of  Genens,  and  not  the  works  of  the 
modem  German  critic,  iHiose  claim  to  credence 
has  been  vindkated  by  the  discoveries  of 


S6  Tbe  FoortoMilfi  Gbtpter  of  Genesis 

archaeology.  It  is  true  that  the  discoveries 
have  been  disputed  by  the  'critic'  inch  by  inch, 
that  first  the  philological  scholarship  of  the 
Assyriologist,  and  then  his  good  faith  was 
questioned,  and  that  now,  when  at  length  a 
grudging  assent  to  undeniable  facts  has  been 
extorted,  we  are  told  that  the  'critical  positioii' 
still  remains  unaffected.  Unaffected!  When 
the  foundation  upon  which  it  rested  is  absolutely 
gone! 

We  read  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  Genesis 
that  'in  the  days  of  Amraphel  king  of  Shinar, 
Arioch  king  of  EUasar,  Chedor-Iaomer  king  of 
Elam,  and  Tid'al  king  of  Nations  (Goyyira) ; 
that  these  made  war  with  Bera  king  of  Sodom, 
and  with  Birsha  king  of  Gomorrah,  Shinab  king 
of  Admah,  and  Shemeber  king  of  Zebciim,  and 
the  king  of  Bela,  which  is  Zoar.  .  .  .  Twelve 
years  they  served  Chedor-Iaomer,  and  in  the 
thirteenth  year  they  rebelled.'  And  in  the  foui^ 
teendi  year  came  Chedor-Iaomer  and  the  kings 
that  were  with  him,  and  smote  *  the  Amorites  of 
Canaan  as  far  south  as  the  later  Kadesh-bamea.' 

There  are  several  points  worthy  of  notice 
in  this  narrative.  Though  it  is  dated  in  the 
reign  of  a  king  of  Babylonia,  the  leader  of  the 


Bilndoo  to  Bm  ^ 

feiw^,  aad     •mertin  to  whom  the  Canaanitish 
princei  were  subject,  was  a  king  of  Elam. 
Elam,  tfaerrfoie,  must  have  been  the  pre- 
«J«nii»iit  power  at  the  time,  and  the  Babylonian 
king  nwst  have  been  its  vassal.   The  narrative 
neverthdess  is  dated  in  the  reign  of  the  Baby- 
lonian king  and  not  In  that  of  the  king  of  Elam 
and  it  Is  to  &e        of  tiie  Babylonian  king 
that  the  events  described  In  it  are  attached. 
Babj^onta,  Iiowever,  was  not  a  united  country; 
A««  WW  anodier  king,  Ariodi  of  Ellasar,  who 
avided  with  Aam^  of  Shinar  the  govern- 
ment of  It,  and  like  Amiaphel  acknowledged 
AesupfemacyofEkm.   FinaUy  the 'Nations,' 
wkoeverthey  weie,  weie  also  subject  to  Elani, 
as  weU  as  tlie  distant  province  <rf  Canaan. 

Now  let  OS  torn  to  die  contemporaneous 
monuments  of  Bab)4onla,  and  see  what  they 
have  to  us  in  regard  to  Ae  very  period 
to  which  the  Book  of  Generis  refers.  Elam, 
we  find,  had  conquered  Babyfonia,  and  the 
aoveie^iig  of  Bab^onia»  aoeofdingly,  had  be- 
come the  vassals  <rf  EiMnite  king.  Along 
with  the  conquest  had  gone  the  division  of 
Babykwia  Into  two  kingdoms ;  while  Khammu- 
fabi  or  Ammu^api  was  reigning  at  Babylon- 


58  TIm  Fottrtoemfi  Oiaptcr  of  Genesis 

the  Biblical  Shinar  in  the  north— Eri-Alai,  the 
son  of  an  Elamite  prince,  was  ruling  at  T  iria 
the  Biblical  EUasar— in  the  south. 

Eastward,  in  the  Kurdish  mountains,  were 
the  Umman  Manda  or  'Barbarian  Nations  "of 
whom  Tudghula  appears  to  have  been  the 
chief.    Canaan  had  long  been,  in  name,  if  not 
always  in  reality,  a  Babylonian  province,  and 
when  Babylonia  passed  under  Elamite  domina- 
tion the  Elamite  king  naturally  claimed  all  the 
provinces  that  had  been  included  in  the  Baby- 
lonian empire.    Indeed,  Eri-Aku  of  Ursa  gives 
his  father  Kudui^Nankhundi  the  title  of '  Father' 
or  '  Governor'  of  the  land  of  the  Amorites,  the 
name  under  which  Canaan  was  known  at  the 
time  in  Babylonia. 

Could  there  be  closer  agreement  between 
the  fragment  of  old-world  history  preserved  in 
the  Book  of  Genesis  and  the  revelations  of  the 
native  monuments.?  Even  the  proper  names 
have  been  handed  down  in  the  Scriptural 
narrative  with  but  little  alteration.  In  the 
name  of  Ellasar,  indeed,  there  has  been  a 
transposition  of  letters,  but,  apart  from  this,  it 
is  only  in  the  name  of  the  king  of  Shinar  or 
Babylon  himself  that  any  serious  difference  is 


o**»v»Wft  Between  Khammu-rabi,  the  usual 
Mjm  of  the  royal  name,  and  Amraphel  the 
««Bfence  is  ocmskleraUe,  and  long  made  me 
doubt  whether  the  two  could,  after  all,  be  identi- 
ned  together. 

But.  again,  with  the  increase  of  knowledge 
has  come  a  solution  of  the  difficulty.  The 
dynasty  to  which  Khammu-mbi  belonged  was 
not  of  Babj^onian  origin.    It  had  conquered 
tiM!  north  of  Babylonia  in  tiie  troublous  times 
which  fdtowed  the  fiOl  of  a  dynasty  whose 
apitel  had  been  Ur.    The  kings  were  of 
Canaanitlsh  and  South  Semitic  origin,  like 
Abram  the  Hebrew,  and  thdr  ancestral  deity 
was  Samu  or  Shtm.  Though  the  language 
spoken  by  them  was  Semitic  it  differed  from 
the  language  of  die  Semitic  Babylonians,  who 
found  scmie  of  the  soundi  whidi  characterized 
It  difficult  to  pronounce. 

Hence  ti^  Babylonian  scribes  did  not  always 
represent  them  in  the  same  way,  and  the  sa:ne 
royal  name  a^peaw  under  difieient  forms  in 
dUteent  documents.  The  fost  element  in  the 
name  of  Khamnnwabi  is  the  name  of  a  god 
which  enters  also  into  tiie  composition  of  the 
Hebrew  names  of  Ammi-d.  Ammi-nadab 


lit  ^MrtMOlli  Ouipiv  of  Genesis 

Rehobo-am,  Jerobo-am  ^nd  Bcn-Ammi,  and 
of  which  Ammon  is  merely  a  derivative.  More 
usually  this  was  spelt  Khammu  by  the  Bukf- 
lonians,  but  we  often  find  the  spelling  A  nmu 
or  Ammi  a  j  v  nil.  Even  the  spelling  of  the 
second  element  in  the  na'  •  of  KhanMUKralM 
was  not  uriifurni,  and.  as  Dr.  Pinches  .vas  the 
first  to  poiiit  ;uc,  Ammu-rap  m  met  with  by 
the  side  of  Khammu-rabi. 

Khammu-rabi,  like  oiiiers  of  his  dynasty, 
daimed  divine  honours  and  was  addressed  by 
his  subjects  as  a  god.  m  Babylonian  i/u  is  *god/ 
the  Hebrew  e/,  and  Ammu-ra^  ilu  would  be 
'Khammu-rabi  the  god."  Now  Immu-rmpi 
is  letter  for  letter  the  Amraphel  of  nesis. 

Thus  the  difficulty  presented  by  the  variaat 
forms  of  the  name  of  the  king  of  Shinar  or 
Babylon  has  disappeared  with  the  progress  of 
archaeological  knowleugr     It  is  one  m  - 
illustration  of  the  fact  that  '  critical '  difficult  s 
and  objections  commonly  turn  out  to  be  - 
result  of  the  imperfection  of  our  own  knuw- 
ledge.    Archaeological  research  is  constant^ 
demonstrating  how  dangerous  it  is  to  questic 
or  deny  the  veracity  of  tr  dition  or  of  ai 
ancient  record  until  we  kno^  %11  facts. 


homer,  once  the  despair  of  etymolo- 
gisli»  prow  tt  be  a  good  Elamite  name.  We 
only  ^  turn  to  the  older  Hebrew  lexicons 
to  aee  how  be^Iess  mere  philology  was  in  face 
of  It;  aithaed^ral  f"--  >very  has  made  it  as 
dear  as  *J»e  iie«  ^ay    There  are  numerous 
^1"^*^  nimci    hich   ire  composed  c*^  two 
«^»«tt,  the  a^  ma   ^ing  the  name  uf  a 
^mhf,  and  *c  ftfir    .ic  v  rd  Jkudur  which 
wmmt  *8rr.^'  or  something  similar.  The 
iaAer  flf  Mr         or  Arioch,  for  instan  e,  had 
tiie  '  fc^Nankhundi,  •  the  servant  of 

Ac  ged^^  IbaUiitiidl'  Lagamar  wa^  one 
<3r  Ae  hsi^  deities,  and  Lag    ar  is 

^  fo  l«ter  4m  Hebrew  iiiW.  w  is 
^i^MK^  hi  tile  Septuagint   The  i.  t 
of  C  ^  44Miar  cm  be  no  Jewish  invention. 

t  t  the  BMMi  of  die  Canaanitish  princes 
»^ve  been  iUuMted  and  verified  by  the 
^ww^onn  inscriptions,  and  thus  shown  to  be 
i^o  iftynoiogied  'fictiflof/  suggested  by  the 
^  -  in  whidi  Aejr  are  found.  The  name  of 
^  ab  Acfaiah  was  borne  by  a  king 
^  in  the  time  of  Tiglath-pileser  III, 

who  writes  it  Saiiibii»  and  perhaps  means  *  the 
it  (my)  fether/  while  Shem-cber  of 


^  Tlii  Fourteenth  Chapter  of  Genesis 

Zeboiim  reminds  us  of  Samu-abi,  the  founder 
of  the  dynasty  to  which  Amraphel  belonged. 

The  accurate  preservation  of  these  foreign 
names  of  ancient  date  leads  to  two  conclusions. 
On  the  one  hand  the  narrative  in  which  tiiey 
occur  cannot  have  been  handed  down  orally 
It  must  have  been  copied  from  a  written 
Babylonian  record  and  been  written  from  the 
outset  m  Hebrew  as  we  find  it  to-day.   In  other 
words,  the  Hebrew  writer  had  before  him  a  Baby 
Ionian  chronicle  from  which  he  extracted  justu 
much  as  related  to  the  subject  of  his  own  history. 

This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  an  examina- 
tion  of  some  of  the  geographical  names  which 
are  mentioned  in  the  story  and  which  indicate 
a  cuneiform  original.    I  have  discussed  them 
elsewhere,  and  need  not  therefore  repeat  here  the 
philological  details.    Those  who  are  interested 
in  the  matter  can  refer  to  my  Higher  Criticism 
and  the  Verdict  of  the  Monuments,      ,60  161 
What  the  Babylonian  record  was  like  is 
not  diflficult  to  discover.     The  Babylonians 
rwdconed  their  chronology  by  the  chief  events 
which  occurred  in  each  successive  year  of 
a  kmg's  reign.  '  The  year  of  a  king's  accession.' 
the  year  m  which  such  and  such  an  event  took 


The  Naifaiivc  In  GcMils  ^ 

iJace,'  was  the  general  formula.  It  was  a 
^lorthand  sommary  of  the  more  detailed 
iwstory  recorded  elsewhere,  which,  however 
^  sunihily  dated  in  the  reign  of  a  particu W 
kmg  and  in  the  particular  year  of  it  when 
a  certain  event  had  happened. 

Now  if  we  torn  to  the  beginning  of  the 
narrative  in  Genesis  we  find  that  it,  too,  is 
dated,  not  in  the  reign  of  the  suzerain  and 
eadcr  of  the  expedition,  Chedor-laomer,  much 
It     "^'f  *  Canaanitish  prince,  or  in  the 
life-time  of  Ahram  lumself,  but  in  the  reign  of 
AeWng  of  Babylonia.   It  must  have  come 
tiitr^  finom  the  officta!  chronicles  of  Baby- 
lonia, from  one  of  thoM  historical  works,  in 

'^p!.^.''*  ^  ^  ^"rrent 
m  Babykmia,  whidi  wooki  have  formed  part 
erf  tl^  Btwature  studied  in  the  schools  and 

Stored  m  the  hTirarie.  of  Canaan  in  the  age  ^ 
Bw^tonian  supremacy  and  influence. 

It  is  e,^  poi«We  that  one  of  the  official 
histon^l  documents  sem  ^  the  West  in  the 
««gn  of  Ae  «n  ,«a  succosor  of  Amraphel 
has  actually  contt  down  to  us.  A  cuneiform 
toblet  IS  pneserved  in  the  Museum  of  Beynit. 

''iwh^-idtehMr^  been  found  inthe 


6*  Tlie  FourtccaHi  Chtpter  of  Genesis 

Lebanon,  and  which  Dr.  Pinches  has  shown  to 
have  been  one  of  the  memoranda  or'state  pspen' 
sent  by  the  Babylonian  government  to  its 
officials  and  scribes  in  order  to  notify  to  them 
the  special  event  or  events  from  which  the 
year  was  to  receive  its  name.   As  Canaan  was 
mcluded  in  the  Babylonian  empire  at  the  time 
to  which  the  tabled  belongs,  it  is  by  no 
means  impossible  that  it  was  really  found  in 
the  district  of  the  Lebanon,  more  especially 
as  Babylonian  seal-cylinders  of  the  same  period 
have  been  discovered  there  \ 

There  is  a  second  conclusion  to  be  deduced 
from  the  accuracy  with  which  the  names  con- 
tained in  the  Babylonian  record  have  been 
preserved  in  the  Hebrew  text  Only  one  of 
them  has  suffered  from  the  carelessness  <if 
scribes  or  the  attacks  of  time ;  in  Ellasar  for 
Larsa  two  of  the  letters  have  been  transposed. 
The  fact  enhances  our  opinion  of  the  Hebrew 

»  See  the  Quar/erly  Stakmai  of  the  FkMiie  En)loimlicNi 
Fund  for  April  and  July,  1900  (pp.  ,,3,  269-273).  The 
'  The  year  when  Samsu-iluna  the  king 
OedicatKl  •  pdUwd  ihfaung  weapon  of  gold  and  saver,  the 
glory  of  the  temple,  to  Merodach  E-SagBt  (the  tenple  of 
Merodach  at  Babylon),  Hke  the  .tan.  of  heaven  iTnade 
WiiaxA.  This  was  the  seventh  year  of  SuMt^faiM'e 


EaHy  SerOwt  Aecttnte 


text  of  the  Pentateuch;  it  cannot  be  so  un- 
certain or  corrupt  as  it  has  sometimes  been  the 
feshion  to  beUeve.  Even  the  propemames 
contained  m  it  have  been  handed  dowa  cor- 
«ictly.  The  text,  in  short,  must  have  been 
transcribed  and  re-edited  from  time  to  time 
with  the  same  official  accuracy  as  we  now 
know  to  have  been  enforced  in  the  case  of 
Assyrian  and  Babylonian  literature. 

In  Assyria  and  Babylonia  the  work  was 
oitoMted  to  the  hands  of  professional  scribes. 
And  the  minute  cafe  which  was  bestowed  upon 
the  acemmte  tnuiscription  of  the  texts  was 
«tmadinary.   Where  we  can  compare  a  text 
Tjr^  let »  «y,  for  one  of  the  Babylonian 
^ranes  of  Amraphd  widi  a  copy  of  it  made 
far  the  library  of  Nineveh  fifteen  hundred 
yM»J«ter  tiM  dtfaeooes  are  slight  and  un- 
Nportant   Indeed,  the  tablets  are  full  of 
of  the  scrupulous  honesty  with  which 
fl>e  qyyats  set  about  thdr  work.    If  the  copy 
Wbre  Him  was  defective,  they  state  the  fact 
-  !^  ™  ^  •ttempt  to  fiU  in  the  missing 
^  Micieii  by  conjecture  or  by  recourse  to 
peite  tablets ;  tf  the  original  Babylonian 
was  uMtahi,  its  various  Assyrian 


66  Tlie  FoorlMiidi  Ckapter  of  Genesis 

equivalents  were  given ;  if  a  date  or  fact  was 
omitted  in  the  original,  the  scribe  honestly  tells 
us  that  he  does  not  know  it  The  reproduction  of 
the  older  documents  was  carried  out  with  almost 
Massoretic  exactitude ;  we  look  in  vain  for  that 
free  handling  of  the  original  authorities  about 
which  the '  higher  criticism '  has  so  much  to  say. 

The  accuracy  with  which  the  Babylonian 
names  have  been  preserved  in  the  fourteenth 
chapter  of  Genesis  is  evidence  that  the  literaiy 
methods  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria  were  in  use 
abo  in  the  schools  and  libraries  of  Israel  and 
Judah.     They  were  not  the  methods  pre- 
supposed  by  the  modem  critic,  but  they  were 
methods  consecrated  by  the  usage  of  centuries 
wherever  the  influence  of  Babylonian  culture 
had  penetrated.    In  Judah  also,  where  we  hear 
of  the  scribes  of  Hezekiah's  library  copying  the 
S!!!!^  ®^  Solomon  (Prov.  xxv.  i),  the  older 
Kteture  must  have  been  re^dited  and  handed 
down  with  the  same  care  and  accuracy  and  the 
■wie  pennanence  of  literary  tradition  as  in 
the  kingdoms  of  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris, 
«d  we  may  therefore  place  the  same  con- 
Boence  ia  die  letter  of  its  texts  as  we  do  in 
that  d  the  clay  tablets  of  Nineveh. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  LAWS  OF  AMRAPHEL  AND  THE 
MOSAIC  CODE 

the  ena  of  the  year  1901  an  important 
discovery  was  made  among  the  ruins  of 
Sttsa— 'Shushan  the  palace/  as  it  is  called  in 
the  Book  of  Daniel.    There  M.  de  Morgan's 
orcavatkms  brought  to  light  the  three  frag- 
ments of  an  enormous  block  of  polished  black 
niMWe,  tbkrkly  covered  with  cuneiform  charac- 
The  diaracters  were  engraved  with  the 
Ingiiest  artistic  skill,  and  at  the  top  of  the 
awwrnent  was  a  low  relief  representing  the 
Bibykmmn  king  Khammu-rabi  or  Amraphel 
raceiving  tbe  laws  of  his  kingdom  from  the 
Sim-gpd  he£ott  whom  he  stands.  When 
tfce  diameters  had  been  copied  and  read,  it 
'ws  fooad  Oat  they  embodied  a  complete  code 
^^"'•-^  earliest  code  yet  discovered 
earfier  than  tbat  of  Moses  by  eight  hundred 
y^*^  ^  A«  foundation  of  the  laws  promu^ 
gttwl  aadtibeyed  throughout  Western  Asia. 
Tke  €QinpHatim  of  the  code  «!»ftrkf>d  the 

s  2 


W  L«w»of  AmraphelaiidtlieBabialcCodf 

overthrow  of  the  Elamite  dofninatkNi,  the 
coveiy  of  Babybnian  independence,  «id  tiie 
estabhshment  once  more  of  a  Babylonian 
empire.   Amraphel  was  in  more  senses  than 
one  the  father  of  his  people;  he  deared  his 
country  not  only  of  its  foreign  enemies  but  also  of 
the  bandits  which  foreign  invasion  had  bioi^t 
in  Its  train,  he  saw  that  justice  was  done  to  the 
least  as  well  as  to  the  greatest,  and  he  todc 
care  that  all  his  subjects  should  know  die  kwi 
under  which  they  were  called  upon  to  live. 

The  individual  laws  had  been  n  extsteoce 
before.    They  embody  for  the  most  part  the 
decisions  of  the  judges  in  the  spedal  caMs 
brought  before  them,  Babylonian  hm  heiee 
like  English  law.  'judge-made'  and  bascd^ 
precedent.    Hence  it  is  that  the  code  foOows 
no  scientific  order,  and  is  arranged  upon  no 
smgle  principle.    Laws  stand  side  by  side  in  ft 
which  belong  to  the  infancy  and  to  the  dd  « 
of  a  state,  and  we  can  trace  in  the  code  ^e 
same  curious  mixture  of  a  patriaithal  and  u 
advanced  state  of  society  that  we  find  m  Ae 
Book  of  Genesis. 

This  may,  perhaps,  be  partly  due  to  Ac 
mixture  of  popuktion  in  Bab3*«iju  Aimaphd 


■Mylmitiu  Lmr  ^ 

Umself  belonged.  like  AbnAam.  to  the  CtaM». 

in  ™any  r^pects  sock;' 
Mund  the  Semites  of  Babylonia,  with  ojr 
»her.tance  of  ancient  Sumerian  civilization. 
W^and  pnnciples,  therefore,  which  chanc 
^  two  Afferent  suges  of  social  culture 
s.de  by  side  in  the  mind  of  the  legi,. 
^r.  and  the  people  for  whom  he  legislaL 

In  Babylonia  as  in  Israel,  the  desert  and 
ae«ty  adjomed  each  other.   Thus  trial  by 
was  admitted,  incompatible  though  h 
tfce  ehborate  system  of  fines  and  the 
demand  for  judicml  evidence  which  otherwise 
*e  Babylonian  code,  anr^e 
*«™»e  <rf  -an  eye  for  an  eye'  and  'a  toodi 

tooth 'finds  a  place  by'the  side  of 
^  unply  that  the  primitive  doctrine  of 

^^rj-^'-^- for  the  con«p,i« 
"  ""P*^  and  passionless  justice 

.uHT  should  have  bee. 

^codified  in  the  age  of  AbnZ 
^  4e  'cnfcal  theory,  which  makes  th. 
Uw  posterior  to  the  Pn^betB,  (d  am 


70  Laws  of  AtBraphe!  and  tlie  Mosaic  Code 
of  its  two  main  supports.  The  dieory  waa 
based  on  two  denials— that  writing  waa  med 
for  literary  purposes  in  the  time  of  Moses,  and 
that  a  legal  code  was  possible  before  the  period 
of  the  Jewish  kings.  The  discovery  of  the  Td 
el-Amama  tablets  disproved  the  first  aMmnp- 
tion ;  the  discovery  of  the  code  of  Khammu- 
rabi  has  disproved  the  second.  Centuries 
before  Moses  the  law  had  ah-eady  been  codified, 
and  the  Semitic  populations  had  long  been 
familiar  with  the  conception  of  a  code. 

The  code  of  Khammu-rabi  was  in  force  in 
Canaan  as  well  as  in  Babylonia.  His  empire 
extended  to  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean, 
and  in  one  of  the  inscriptions  relating  to  him 
the  only  title  he  bears  is  that  of  'king  of  the 
land  of  the  Amorites.'  When  the  Isnelitet 
invaded  Palestine,  accordingly,  we  may  con- 
clude that,  like  the  Babylonian  language  and 
script,  the  Babylonian  code  of  Khammu-rabi 
was  still  current  there.  ]  ts  provisions,  in  &ct, 
must  have  been  enforced  and  obeyed  wherever 
the  political  power  and  influence  of  Babylonia 
were  felt. 

The  codification  of  the  law,  therefore,  was 
no  new  thing  in  the  days  of  Mosea.  On  the 


It  WW  a  very  old  feet  in  the  history  of 
wettem  Atia,  a  fact,  too.  with  which  Abraham 
«d  Jacob  mutt  alike  have  been  acquainted. 
Not  only  could  the  Hebrew  leader  have  com- 
pried  a  code  of  laws;  we  now  see  that  it  would 
have  been  incredible  had  he  not  done  so. 

Certam  Gennan  Assyriologists  have  been  at 
ff«at  pains  to  dwcover  similarities  between  the 
00^     Khammu-raW  and  Moses,  and  to  infer 
thia  a  oooQexion  between  them.  And 
there  arc  cases  in  which  the  similarity  is  strik- 

^  example,  who  had  been 
aslaved  for  debt  wa.  to  be  manumitted  after 
ttwcc  Wi  acooitKng  to  the  code  of  Khammu- 

«wjefc    Kidnapping  again,  was  punished  in 
both  «4es  bydeath.and  there  are  some  curious 
'^blances  in  the  laws  relating  to  death 
ftom  the  goring  of  an  OL   If  the  owner  of  the 
OK  could  be  pmed  to  have  been  negligent  or 
otherwM^  responsible  for  the  accident,  the 
Babylonian  law  enacted  that  he  should  be  fined 
half  a  maneh  of  silver,  or  one-thiid  of  a  maneh 
If  the  dead  maa  were  a  slave;  in  Israel  the 
P^afty  of  death  was  exacted  in  the  first  case 
•ad  a  fee  <^  hatf  a  maneh  in  the  second. 


72  K-Awt  of  Amntphel  and  the  MoMk  Code 

Where,  however,  the  owner  was  not  in  fiiiilt^ 
he  went  impunished  in  both  codes,  thou^  die 

Mosaic  code  required  that  the  ox  ihould  be  pot 

to  death. 

The  difference  between  the  two  codes  in  tfaia 
last  particular  is  characteristic  of  a  difference 
which  runs  through  the  whole  of  them,  and 
makes  the  contrast  between  them  &r  gieirter 
and  more  striking  than  any  agreement  tiiat  am 
DC  pointed  out.    The  code  of  Khammu-iabi 
presupposes  a  settled  state,  a  kingdom,  in  short, 
m  which  law  is  supreme  and  the  individual  it 
forbidden  to  take  it  into  his  own  hands.  The 
code  of  Moses,  on  the  other  hand,  is  addreHed 
to  a  more  backward  community,  which  has  not 
yet  become  a  state,  but  is  still  in  the  condition 
of  a  tribal  confederacy.  The  principle  of  blood- 

in  it ;  the  individual  it 
still  aUowed  to  avenge  himself,  and  even  cities 
of  refuge  are  provided  in  which  the  hoaidde 
may  find  protection  from  the  'pursuers  of 
blood.'  The  law  can  defend  him  from  private 
vengeance  only  as  it  were  by  a  subterfuge. 

It  is  this  principle  of  blood-revenge  —  of 
^ood  for  blood-that  necessitates  the  death 
of  the  ox  which  has  caused  the  'i^^h  of  a 


of  tfaeCodes  73 

'Whoso  sheddeth  man's  hlood,  by  man 
jjan  his  blood  be  shed/  is  the  keynote  of  the 
Mosaic  legislation ;  in  the  legislation  of  Baby- 
Joma  the  keynote  is  rather  the  seairity  5 
property  and  the  omnipotence  of  the  law  In 
only  two  instances  is  the  individual  allowed 
to  forestell  the  action  of  the  law,  either  when 
a  bngand  is  caught  red-handed  or  when  a  timn 
»  found  robbing  the  house  of  a  neighbour 
J«*i^has  been  set  on  fire.    The  contrut 
the  two  legislative  systems  cannot 
be  too  forcibly  emphasized:  the  one  is  intended 
for  a  state,  the  other  for  tribes  which  are  stiB 
m  die  unsettled  condition  of  die  lauKkmr 
AnO)  of  to-day.  '-^m^ 

Bw  tiiere  is  yet  another  difference  between 
tite  codes  of  Babylonia  and  Israel.    The  Bdbyw 
foofan  code  is  marked  by  greater  severity,  more 
e^PwaUy  where  offences  against  property  are 
wncemed.   Doubtl  ss  this  was  partly  due  to 
ttenecessity  of  suppressing  the  brigandage 
^  fweign  and  civil  war  had  left  behind 
rtjbnt  die  main  reason  is  to  be  sought  in  m 
<™«nce  of  social  organization.  Babylonia 
~a  great  trading  community ;  its  wealdi  was 
&om  commerce  and  agriculture,  and 


74  K'«wt  of  Amraplid  and  tiic  Hotak  Godf 

offences  against  property  ther^  ttmck  at 
^e  foundations  of  the  fnmperity  o#  Hie  iti^ 
The  Israelitish  tribes  on  the  contwiy.  were 
neither  traders  nor  agriculturirt^  and  wiiife 
every  individual  hfe  was  of  importance  to  tlie 
community  the  individual's  private  property 
was  of  comparatively  little  account.    The  ooBh 
I»rative  humanity  of  the  Mosaic  code  in  ramct 
of  theft  and  robbery  has  the  same  origin  at  the 
prominence  given  in  it  to  the  right  of  prhate 
revenge. 

A  third  point  of  contrast  between  the  tm 
codes  is  to  be  found  in  the  laws  of  inheritance. 
The  Babylonian  father  was  able  to  »n^^  a  wiB 
and  leave  a  'favourite  son '-'the  son  of  hii 
eye,'  as  the  phrase  goes—'  an  estate,  gudn,  or 
house*  over  and  above  the  share  in  the  property 
to  which  he  was  entitled  upon  his  father's  death. 
Of  this  there  is  no  sign  or  trace  in  the  Mosaic 
code.    Testamentary  devolution  presupposes 
not  only  an  advanced  stage  of  civilization,  but 
also  advanced  ideas  in  regard  to  the  tenure  of 
property.    In  a  tribal  confedeiacy  the  wiU  was 
necessarily  unknown. 

The  httle  that  is  said  in  the  Mosaic  code 
about  the  woman's  rights  of  inheritance  hM 


I't  Inheritance  ^ 

a  simdar  explanation.    The  code  of  Khawnm- 
rabi  contains  minute  directions  about  the 
share  in  the  estate  left  by  her  husband,  tlm 
dowry  she  brought  with  her  at  marriage  revM 
to  her,  th    property  settled  upon  her  by  her 
husband  is  secured  to  her,  and  along  with  her 
children  she  has  a  claim  to  the  usufruct  of  the 
rest  of  the  estate.     In  case  there  was  no 
marriage  settlement  she  obtains  a  share  of  the 
uotate  equal  to  that  of  each  of  the  childim  If 
the  widow  niarries  again  she  loses  the  property 
settled  upon  her  by  her  first  husband,  and  if 
her  children  are  still  under  age  ahe  and  the 
second  husband  arc  required  to  mpBOft  aad 
educate  them. 

For  all  this  we  '       n  vain  in  the  MoMii^ 
code.    Even  the  dowry  brought  by  the  v/lfe 
18  unknown  to  it    The  fact  is  rendere  Uie 
more  significant  by  a  notice  in  the  Books  of 
Jk)shua  and  Judges,  whi-T,  shows  th;  t  though 
»e  gift  of  the  dowry  w;i£; :  ot  prer  cribed  by  the 
fifosaic  law  it  was  known  in  Canaan  down  to 
tibe  moment  of  the  Israelitish  i  ivasion.  When 
Caleb  •  the  son  of  Kenaz,'  we  rend,  gave  kk 
jroghter  Achsah  in  marriage  to  Othniel  upon 
the  capture  of  Kirjath-scpher  'she  oio««dhte 


76  i^'nciAmMthdtuiAtUtmicOA 
toMk  rfher  fcAer  a  field.'   The  Israelirish 
wxnu  under  the  Mosaic  code  did  not  enjoy 
*e  ««emeM»«  of  independence  as  the  Bab,; 
ZZT^ ;  she  was  more  in  the  portion 
"e  Mb  woman  of  to-day. 

The  oontiatt  between  the  two  codes  is  really 
»»"•»«  m  the  social   oiganization  and 

^  A  Sl^ir^  """P"'''-  As  compared 
SS^^SS'ir'^  °/the  Babylonian 
««««Ba  weie  m  a  backward  state.  The 

Wprf;  themdnrfd«l  «m  claimed  the  privilege 
rf  Ubng  «  inu.  hi,  own  hands;  the  status  of 
-f  «»!•*  of  the  mere  'helpmeet' 

Wwn  we  paw  from  tiie  more  general 

a«  partBtth,  pwvirion.  the  same  contrast 

Both,  for  instance, 
P^Ubit  tfce  eredto,  from  depriving  the  in 

■™«  tlie  third  of  a  maaeh.  or  £3,  by  the 


of  Moses  forlade 
km  to  tike  his  'neighbour's  raiment  to  pledee ' 
.*er  nightfall,  -for  that  is  his  raimenf  5. 
(Exod  «u.  a6.  ^^).    Moses  was  addressing  a 
body  of  nonu.d  tribesmen  for  whom  the  cloak 
m  which  they  slept  at  night  was  of  primary 
""PWtence  whereas  the  law  of  Khammu.«W 
«8  mtoided  for  a  setded  population,  a  laige  part 
«rf«*om  w«  agriculturists  dependent  on 
Ptoj^g  oxen  for  their  means  of  support 
TW«  tt  ,  similar  contrast  observable  in 

«*leh  ha*  It.  roots  in  the  difference  between 
•        airf  powerful  kingdom  far  advanced  in 
"tore  .»d  dvilization.  and  desert  tribes  who 
^  yet  ao  had  that  they  can  call  their  own. 
*«tom  ofAe  law,  of  the  Babylonian  code,  for 
««*«e,  rehte  to  the  surgeon  and  veterinary. 
»*o  w«  dready  distinguished  from  one  an- 
oAer  fa  4e  dd  dviliation  of  the  Euphrates. 
If  a  aurgeon.'  we  read,  -performs  a  serious 
°^»too  on  a  man  with  a  bronze  lancet,  and 
Z^,J:^  '^'^  »  *»™our  has  been 
die  lancet  or  a  disease  of  the  eye 
cured,  he  shaU  receive  ten  shekels  of 


78  L«w»olAiii«pWandthcMo8afcCode 

'  If  the  operation  has  been  performed  on  a 
poor  man,  he  shall  receive  five  shekels  of  sUver. 

'  If  the  operation  has  been  performed 
a  slave,  the  slave's  master  shaU  pay  him  two 
shekels  of  silver. 

•  If  the  surgeon  has  performed  a  serious  opera- 
tion with  a  bronze  lancet  upon  a  man,  and  the 
man  die,  either  through  his  opening  a  tumow 
with  his  lancet  or  destroying  the  man's  eye,  his 
hands  shall  be  cut  off. 

'  If  the  surgeon  has  performed  die  operation 
upon  a  slave  (or)  poor  man,  and  the  man  dies 
slave  for  slave  shall  he  render. 

•  If  he  has  opened  the  tumour  unsuccessfuUy 
or  destroyed  the  eye,  he  shaU  pay  the  eqHmOem 
of  the  slave's  value. . 

'  If  the  surgeon  heals  a  man's  broken  limb,  or 
has  cured  a  disease  of  the  intestines,- the  r^^hnt 
sliall  pay  die  surgeon  five  shekels  of  silver. 

•  If  a  veterinary  has  performed  an  opeiiuicMi 
on  an  ox  or  an  ass  and  has  cured  it,  the  owner 
thaU  pay  die  veterinary  a  fee  of  the  sixth  m 
ofa  shekel  (5^.).  ^ 

•If  he  has  performed  an  operation  on  an  ox 
or  an  ass  and  the  animal  dies,  he  tmm  ptx  lit 
owner  a  fourdi  part  of  its  value* 


Tie  code  of  Moses  knows  nothing  of  ei&er 
«g«  or  veterinary.  The  doctor  and  «be 
"T™  had  been  left  behind  in  Egnt- 

Una  had  been  cx,nquered.  with  i,. 

B«bylon«u,  culture  and  medicine  and  its  Baby- 
loniaB  law,  a,e  law-book  was  nece«arilv  .ilJt 
«>  regard  to  medical  jurisprudence. 

nie  Monic  code  contains  indeed  a  law  ana- 
to^t-to  Aoee  we  have  been  considering,  but 
"«  the  phce  of  the  doctor  is  fcUcen  by  the 

men  strive  toge^? 

with 

^orw^h.sfis,andhedieno,but 
bed;  if  he  nse  again,  and  walk 
•fc-^  up*  Mi  st>g.  then  shall  he  that 

Si^Kr  J-  • ' 

J^^wa  Bwi  tiM  civJized  monarchy  of 

"2*^  life  of  the  A»fc«. 


wWA  a  comparison  of  the 
hneikiA  code  tha.  shows 


iJlLSr^  tt  enhanced  by  another 
">P  iiH  M.     Usages  aad  fam  ^ 


8t)  ^^  QiAmmtbdmii§mmmkCod€ 

r^Tcd  to  in  the  patriarchal  history  as  de- 
■cribed  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  for  which  we 
«n  find  no  parallel  in  the  Mosaic  legislation. 
They  are  explained,  however,  by  the  newly- 
found  code  of  Khammu-rabi.    I  have  long 
Mnce  pointed  out  that  the  details  of  the  purchase 
of       cave  of  Machpelah  by  Abraham  are  in 
•tTKrt  conformity  with  the  requirements  of  Baby- 
»^«woommercial  law  as  it  was  administered  in 
«fj^alianiic  age.    Even  the  technical  term 
•Mdt  of  silver'  was  borrowed  from  Baby- 
to^  at  well  as  the  description  of  the  property 
coQttsting  of  'field.'  ' ix)ck-chamber/  and 

aw  now  feming  diat  in  other  respects 
i*o«a hw  wfaidi  lies  behind  the  narratives  of 
AeJaw,  notof  Moses,  butof  Khammu- 
1^  the  action  of  Sarah  in  giving  Hagar 

f  J^!^  ^""^^^  to 

Jaco^  wiiathey  themselves  were  childless  was 

awofdaace  with  die  Babylonian  code. 


that  die  wife  could  present  her 
a  concubine,  and  if  she  had  had 
it  WIS  even  permitted  him  to  take 
Id  kferior  wife.   As  a  corollary  of 
ttWM  forOter  enacted  that  'if  a  man  haa 


awiTied  a  wife  and  she  has  given  a  concubine 
to  her  husband  by  whom  he  has  had  a  child. 
~  the  concubine  afterwards  have  a  dispute 
wifli  her  mistress  because  she  has  borne  children 
to  mistress  cannot  sell  her;  she  can  only  lay 
•  task  upon  her  and  make  her  live  with  the 

t""""'  ^«  "nder. 

»bwd  Ae  conduct  of  Sarah  after  her  quanel 
with  Hagar;  the  law  did  not  allow  her  to  seU 
her  fonner  maid,  and  all  that  could  be  done 

w  to  induce  Abraham  to  drive  Hagar  horn 
aia  camp. 

EquaUy  stoking  is  the  explanation  no, 
«fc«*d  at  of  the  words  of  the  chadless  Abi». 
IiWwtoH»aldngofhishouse^rteward.EUezer. 

faitiS:  J^t'f"""        »  part 
of  Kh»,mu-K.bi  as  weU  as  in  Ae 

^'""^      by  the  act  of 
ZT^tT^^  of  a  free  ««. 

H««elf  fre^  even  though  his  statu. 

SjSirof*^  of  ,  slave.  Adoption.  i„ 
wu  oattiitfinr  to  the  code  of  Israel 


■»         of  AawqAd  and  the  Hoaafc  Cod* 

Tamar  on  the  supposition  that  die  «aa  a 
widow,  finds  its  explanation  in  the  BdWoota, 
code,  where  the  same  punishment  it  a^ctej 
against  a  nun  who  has  been  unfaithful  to  ber 
vows  of  virginity  or  widowhood.  PetWtoo. 
J^may  see  in  Jacob's  admission  dirt  wW 
had  stolen  Uban's  gods  should  be  put  to  deMfc 
(Gen.        3,).  a  reference  to  the  Babj*»rf,„ 
la»^  which  punished  sacrilege  with  death 

The  conclusion  that  must  be  dawn  bom  the 
foregoing  ferts  is  obvious.  A  comparison  of 
the  code  of  Babylonia  with  that  of  Israel  W 
««^.t  clear  that  the  latter  wa.  iwended  for 
a  body  of  nomad  tribes  who  were  not  ye, 
~ttled  in  acountry  where  the  laws  of  Babyloni. 
w«e  stdl  in  force.   |„  other  wo«ls,  the  Mo«dc 
«*  must  belong  to  the  age  to  which  tradWon 
P'^PPO^  the  historical  CO* 
dmon.  which  the  Biblical  namtive  d«««be* 
No*  «^y  has  the  code  of  Khammu^rti  ptovS 
the  I,pUtion  of  Moses  was  possible,  it 

Zu^  Politieil 
««««»»«ances  under  which  it  claims  to  have 

«»«  are  the  only  ones  under  which  it  ooiild 
WW  been  compiled. 

And  yet  more.   While  the  Mo«c  code,  i. 


the  Code  of  the  Dfeacrt 

contradistinction  to  the  BabylonfaMi  code, 
longs  to  the  desert  rath«  Am  to  dty, 
the  laws  implied  in  the  narratives  of  Bo4 
of  Genesis  are  those  which  actually  wm  ewiM 
m  Canaan  in  the  patriarchal  age.  NowteoT 
a  post-Mosaic  date  could  have  iwariniJ  or 
invented  them;  like  the  qmrm  pg^erfod  in 
Genesis,  they  characterize  tfaepatriarchii]  Mflod 
and  no  other.    The  answer  of  anAa«W  to 
the  theones  of  modem  'criticiani'  ham^- 
the  Law  preceded  the  Prodiet*.  and  mZ^ 
follow  them. 

At  present  it  is  the  civil  law  alone  which  we 
^  compare  with  that  of  Babyloma. 
Babylonian  ritual  code  has  not  y«  been  «»t. 
covered.  But  many  of  its  provisions  are  Imomt 
to  us  from  the  religious  and  magical  texts,  aad 
then-  resemblance  to  the  provisions  of  the  tib^ 
few  of  Israel  is  at  times  startling.    Even  the 
technical  terms  of  the  Mosaic  ritual  are  iomi 
^n  in  Babylonia.    Those  who  wish  to  ste# 
Ae  subject  may  turn  to  my  Gifford  L^^resZ 
^  Rehgtons  of  Ancimt  Egypt  and  BahlomtL 
where  the  chief  points  of  likeness  and 
are  pointed  out 
There  was,  in  fact,  a  closer  f 

F  2 


84  l**»otAnw^«rf4tBo*leCode 

Jill's  t^rsr'fi"^'--' 

^  *e  ritual  enactn,^^ 

S^^^whi,*  have  been  a3-gn«,^ 

X!lrT^,°^  histoor  and  religion,  de- 

lus  come  down  to  us    tu^  ^   i 

<rf  the  indivtoal  laws  The  formula 

IfteT^SL^T""^     Babylonian  hwW 

-  the  hw  rfo«r  aw„  lunti^"**  °° 

oaaed  on  iimiJar  dedswos.  A 


tilt  Laws  85 

mow  fwnarkable  confirmation  of  the  Biblical 
nwwtive  could  not  have  been  afforded.  We 
rwd  m  the  Book  of  Exodus  how,  befora  tlw 
codification  of  the  law  at  Sinai,  judgct  were 
appointed  who  'judged  the  people  at  aU 
•ewons  ;  only  the  more  important  cases  Imag 
««»ved  for  Moses  himself.     Moses  Iws 
occupied  the  same  position  as  a  court  of  final 
appeal  as  that  which  was  occupied  by  the  king 
to  the  Babylonia  of  Amraphel  or  by  the  hirf^ 
pncit  in  the  Babylonia  of  an  earlier  age.  and  it 
"noteworthy  that  the  arrangement  was  8t«. 
gesled  to  him  by  the  high-priest  of  Midian--a 
country  that  had  once  been  within  the  Babyw 
iorien  sphere  of  influence. 

Tht  origin  of  the  several  laws  of  which 
tt»  Babylonian  and  Mosaic  codes  are  com- 
poeed  «plains  their  heterogeneous  and  un- 
^wi^c  character.  The  different  groups  into 
«^they  fall  are  not  connected  with  oae 

general  principle  runniBg 
^'^i  Aem,  and  enactments  which  belong 
to  ^feent  stages  of  social  development  and 
«^Pi^oii  Wand  in  them  side  by  side.  ItM 
Ae  codes  themselves  consist  of  com- 
WOmm  made  at  various  dates,  but  that 


»  L^o<Ao»pW»ndtli»MoMfcCo(fc 

individual  hw,  which  eonrfw,  4^  ^ 
decisions  of  the  courts,  and  cooMau^JH 
»ot  p,«nounced  at  one  and  th<r^^ 
In  the  body  of  the  code  KIm»«»L| 
•"urnes  the  credit  of  the  legidatteThC. 

L  r  ■"'"k  •'^  P-Wlied  Z 

i» preceded  and  followed  by .n  •ddiCMte^ 

«*om  stands  -the  supreme  god'  the  ipeeW 

t  ""^  """^  himself.^ 

^  Ae  top  0  the  monument  on  which  the  code 
to»8«ved  ,s  a  bas-«hef  representing  the  Si 

Sud^of'r ^-^^ 

judge  of  heaven  and  earth/  The  tUfl. 
^un:e  consequently  to  which  the  law.  « 
Wftawd  IS  the  inspiration  of  the  god.  This  fc 
ta^Hance  wi-d,  .he  older  BabyLian^ 
•*»ch  assigned  the  fi«  law-book  to  the 

^  Ea,  «,d  made  him  the  in«™ctor of  ««in 

•lithe  arts  of  life. 

The  parallelism  betweci  thr  B.i,.  i  • 

Je^«-theh.sto.,of.hTMS,tSr 
»  t^obvious  to  need  emphasizingi^lio,^ 

•~*e  leguUtor  of  Ismel,  and  his  civU  code 
«««««I  m  laige  measure  of  the  1^  -j^ 


Whet  of  tbe  Diieovery  87 

ments '  of  himsdf  and  his  fellow  judges.  With 
all  this,  however,  it  was  nevertheless  derived 
from  God ;  the  inspiration  of  Yahveh  was  the 
true  source  from  which  it  had  come.  It  was 
the  same  spirit  of  inspiration  as  that  which 
fell  on  the  seventy  'elders'  and  judges  of  the 
Israelitish  tribes,  and  in  regard  to  which 
Moses  declared  that  he  would  'that  the  Loni 
would  put  His  Spirit  upon'  the  whole  peocde 
(Numb.  xi.  24-29). 


We  may  now  sum  up  the  results  of  the  latest 
discovery  in  Assyriology.  It  has  for  ever 
shattered  the  'critical'  theory  which  wooki 
put  the  Prophets  before  the  Uw,  it  has  thrown 
light  on  the  form  and  character  of  the  Mosaic 
code,  and  it  has  indirectly  vindicated  the 
historical  character  of  the  narratives  of  Genesis. 
If  such  are  the  results  of  a  single  discovery, 
what  may  we  not  expect  when  the  buried 
Kbfarics  of  Babylonia  have  been  more  fully 
excavated,  and  their  contents  coined  and^ 


rout? 


MICROCOPY  RESOIUTION  TiST  CHART 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No.  2) 


i   /1PPLIED  ItVHGE  Inc 


1653  Edit  Main  StrMt 

Rochnter,  New  York      U609  US* 

(716)  +82  -  0300  -  Phone 

(716)  288  -  5989  -  Fox 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  GEOGRAPHY  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH 
JT  is  now  time  to  turn  from  Babykmia  to 

Egypt,  from  the  day  tablets  and  monoliths  of 
Assyria  or  Babylonia  to  the  papyri  and  temples 

of  the  va%  of  the  Nile.  We  have  seen  how 
the  most  confidently  announced  assumptions 
and  'results'  of  'criticism'  have  crumWed  into 
dust  befofe  the  fiM*i  of  archaeology  in  the 
departments  of  history  ai^  law;  we  must  now 
consider  whedier  the  same  is  the  case  in  the 
province  of  gepg«phy.   That  the  geogmphy  of 
Palestine  itself  and  the  lands  Immediately  ad- 
jommg  it  should  be  con^y  described  in  the 
lestamoit  narratives  pfoves  little  either 
one  way  or  anodier  for  thehr  auAeatidty  and 
^  on  any  supposition  tiie  writers  of  them 
Hved  m  the  country  wherein  the  scene  of  the 
narratives  is  laid,  and  excqit  in  an  intentiooany 
•Haggadic '  production  like  die  apocryphal  Book 
of  Judith  the  details  of  its  geography  would  be 
cwrecdy  givoi. 


Coatect  of  Piilestine  and  Egypt  89 

But  it  is  otherwise  when  we  pass  from 
Palestine  to  Egypt    The  political  changes 
which  swept  over  the  monarchy  of  the  Nile 
profoundly  altered  from  time  to  time  the  geo- 
graphy of  the  Delta  and  its  relations  to  Asia. 
Fortified  cities  were  built  and  deserted,  capitals 
were  shifted,  and  canals  opened  or  blocked  up. 
The  geography  of  the  Eastern  Delta  differed 
essentially  at  different  periods  of  Egyptian 
history.   A  map  of  it  drawn  in  the  1^  of 
the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  would  have  pcesented 
wholly  different  features  from  one  drawn  at  any 
other  time. 

There  are  three  periods  when  Old  Testament 
history  comes  into  contact  with  that  of  Egypt^ 
the  patriarchal  period,  the  period  of  the  Exodus, 
and  the  period  of  the  Israelitish  kings.  Of  these 
the  period  of  the  Exodus  is  the  only  one  which 
concerns  us  at  present   If  the  '  critic  *  is  r%ht, 
the  story  of  the  Exodus  was  written  down 
centuries  after  the  supposed  evmt,  and  was 
derived,  not  from  contemporaneous  documents, 
but  from  popular  tradition  and  legend.   Let  m 
once  more  apply  the  archaedogical  tes^  and 
see  what  is  the  verdict 

Egyptok^gists  were  bog  since  i^^Ked  that  U 


90   The  Gtognfhj  of  t!ie  Ptateteuch 

there  is  any  truth  in  the  story  of  the  Exoduf 
Ramses  II,  the  great  Pharaoh  of  the  Nineteenth 
Dynasty,  must  have  been  the  Pharaoh  of  the 
Oppression.  One  of  the  chief  objects  with 
which  the  Egypt  Exploration  Fund  was  started 
was  to  put  this  conclusion  to  the  proof,  and  it 
was  not  long  before  the  object  was  achieved. 
We  are  told  in  the  Book  of  Exodus  that  the 
two  cities  built  by  the  Israelites  for  the  Pharaoh 
were  Pithom  and  Raamses.  That  Raamses  was 
built  by  Ramses  II  was  already  known  from 
a  papyrus  which  gives  an  account  of  the  city, 
and  in  1884  Dr.  Naville  discovered  the  ruins 
of  Pithom.  Excavations  soon  revealed  the 
further  fact  that  Pithom  too  owed  its  foundation 
to  the  same  Pharaoh,  and  thus  established  once 
for  all— if  the  Biblical  statement  is  correct— that 
Ramses  II  and  the  Pharaoh  at  whose  court 
Moses  was  brought  up  were  one  and  the  same. 

It  is  thus  clear  that  the  Exodus  took  place 
while  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty  was  still  reigning 
in  Egypt  If,  therefore,  the  Biblical  account  of 
the  Exodus  is  historically  true,  the  geographical 
details  involved  in  it  must  correspond  with  the 
map  of  the  Delta  as  it  existed  at  that  particular 
epoch.    If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  map  pre- 


G««nq^y  of      Diite  91 

supposed  by  Umn  is  of  a  later  date,  the  critical 
oontentton  will  be  justified  and  the  story  of 
Moses  eviqporates  into  mist 

Now  it  so  happens  that  we  know  a  good  deal 
about  the  geography  of  the  Eastern  Delta  in  the 
age  of  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty,  thanks  to  the 
papyri  whidi  have  come  down  to  us  from  thtt 
period.  Egypt  was  protected  from  Asia  by 
a  great  line  of  fortifications,  the  Shur,  or '  Wall,' 
as  it  is  called  in  the  Pentateuch,  which  followed 
much  tiie  same  ^.ourse  as  the  Suez  Canal  of 
to-day.  The  passages  through  the  Wall  were 
strongly  guarded,  and  to  the  west  of  it  was  the 
district  cS  Thukot  or  Succoth,  of  which  Pithom 
was  &e  capital  Godien  stretched  westwanls  of 
this  in  die  Wadi  Tumilit  along  the  banks  of 
the  modem  Frediwater  Canal  and  in  the  direc- 
tion ci  Bdbeis  and  Zagazig. 

Meneptah,the  son  and  successor  of  Ramses  1 1, 
built  a  Khetem  or  '  Fortress '  in  the  district  of 
Thukot,  whkk  may  have  been  the  Etham  of  the 
Pentateudi.  But  Khetem  was  a  generic  name 
corresponding  to  the  Semitic  Migdol,  and  there 
was  anodier  Khetem  built  by  Ramses  II  which 
waa  nearer  to  the  Wall  Both  Khetems  would 
have  been  *on  die  e4ge  of  the  wilderness.' 


9a   T!ie  Geography  of  the  Pentateuch 

The  land  of  Goshen,  we  are  expressly  infonned 
by  Meneptah,  had  been  left  'as  pasture  for  catde' 
and  handed  over  to  Asiatic  nomads  'stnce  the 
days  of  his  forefathers.'   In  the  fifUi  year  of  his 
reign,  when  Libyan  invaders  were  overrunning 
Egypt,  it  was  still  in  the  possession  of  die 
'foreigners,'  and  on  the  skirts  of  it  accoidinrfy 
the  invaders  and  their  allies  had  pitched  their 
tents.  Shortly  afterwards,  however,  the  Asiatic 
herdsmen  had  disappeared,  and  the  whole  district 
was  without  inhabitants.   A  letter  written  to 
the  Pharaoh  in  the  eighth  year  of  his  reign  by 
an  official  stationed  on  the  frontier  makes  this 
clear.  The  writer  says  in  it :  *  We  have  allowed 
the  tribes  of  the  Bedawin  from  Edom  to  pass 
the  fortress  (Khetem)  of  Meneptah  in  the  district 
of  Thukot  [and  go]  to  the  lakes  of  Pithom  of 
Meneptah  in  the  district  of  Thukot,  in  order  to 
feed  themselves  and  their  herds  on  the  great 
estate  of  the  Pharaoh.'  This « great  estate '  may 
be  'the  farmstead'  which  the  Septuagint  snb- 
stitutes  for  Pi-hahiroth  in  Exod.  xiv.  9.  At  any 
rate,  the  lakes  lay  to  the  west  of  Pithom,  and 
their  site  can  still  be  recognized. 

That  the  district  was  regarded  as  a  private 
domain  of  the  Pharaohs  may  be  gathered  fiom 


5 


L«ttcr  iCQt  to  Sell  n  ^ 

Ae  Old  Testament  narrative.   It  was  given  by 

the  Pharadi  to  Jacob  and  his  sons,  as  Menepta'^ 
repeats  had  been  die  case;  and  when  the 
Israelites  were  transformed  into  royal  serfs  it 
must  have  been  upon  die  plea  that  die  land  on 
which  diey  dwelt  was  peculiarly  a  possession  of 
the  king;  dieir  exodus  left  it  deserted,  and  the 
jeabudy  guarded  gates  o{  die  great  Wall  were 
accordingly  <^ed,  to  let  new  setders  enter  die 
vacant  pastures. 

There  is  yet  another  letter  on  papyrus  which 
supplements  the  geographical  information  of 
the  first   It  was  sent  to  Meneptah's  successor 
Seti  II,  and  describes  the  pursuit  of  two  fugitive 
slaves  who  had  escaped  alon^  the  same  road  as 
thatwhichhadbeenMowedby  die  Israelites:— 
'  I  set  out,'  says  die  writer. '  from  die  haU  of  die 
royal  palace  on  die  nindi  day  of  die  mondi 
Ei»iAi,  in  the  evening,  in  pursuit  of  die  two 
daves.    I  reached  die  fortress  (Khetem)  of 
ThukotondietendicrfEpiphi.  I  was  informed 
diat  die  men  had  resolved  to  take  tiieir  way 
towards  die  soudi.   On  die  twelfth  I  reached 
the  fortress.   These  I  learnt  diat  grooms  who 
had  come  from  die  neighbourhood  [had  reported] 
that  the  fugitives  had  ahready  passed  die  Wall 


94    Tht  GiOgftpiir  ol  tiic  PRifa«tuefi 

to  the  north  of  the  Migdol  of  King  Seti/  who 
may  be  either  Seti  I,  the  father  of  Ramses  II. 
or  Seti  II,  his  great-grandson. 

The  Wall  extended  southwards  until  it  met 
an  arm  of  the  Gulf  of  Suez.  Dr.  Naville  has 
shown  ^hat  this  must  have  extended  a  good  deal 
furth''  vrth  than  it  does  to-day,  and  the  fugitive 
from  ligypt  would  have  found  it  difficult  to 
evade  the  vigilance  of  the  Egyptian  garrisons. 

Such  was  the  geography  of  the  Delta  at  the 
time  when,  if  the  y  orical  details  of  the  Book 
of  Exodus  may  be  trusted,  Moses  was  bom  in 
the  land  of  Goshen  and  his  fellow-countrymen 
escaped  finally  from  their  house  of  bondage. 
It  was  a  geography  that  was  not  true  either  of 
the  age  which  preceded  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty 
or  of  the  centuries  which  followed  it   d      ;  .e 
fell  of  the  successors  of  Ramses  II  wo  ;  .no 
more  of  Thukot  and  its  Khetem,  of  Migdol  on 
the  line  of  fortification,  or  even  of  the  Wall  itself. 
The  district  of  Goshen  is  no  longer  set  apart 
for  the  Semitic  herdsmen  of  Canaan.  The 
political  situation  was  changed,  and  with  the 
change  in  the  political  situation  came  a  change 
m  the  map  of  the  land. 
It  is,  however,  with  the  map  of  the  Delta  in 


die  age  of  the  Nineieentli  Dynasty  that  the 
geogmpliy  of  die  Exodus  agreca.   Pithom  and 
Raamiei  were  built  tor  the  Pharaoh  of  the 
Opprestioii,  and  when  die  flight  from  Egypt 
took  place  in  die  re^      his  successor  the 
Israelites  passed  fiom  dieir  old  homes  in  the 
land  of  Goshen  to  Raamses  and  Succoth,  and 
fipom  thence  to  the  Khetem  *on  the  edge  of  the 
^"'fldemess.*   Here  diey  found  themselves  con- 
fronted by  die  WaH  widi  its  Migdol,  while  die 
aca  barred  die*  •  way  towards  die  soudi  (Exod. 
xtv.  s).   The  desert  had 'shut  diem  m/ and  it 
seemed  as  if  tiiey  would  M  an  easy  prey  to  die 
pursuing  forces  of  dieir  kte  masters. 

This  agreement  of  the  geography  of  die 
Exodus  widi  the  actual  geography  of  die  Delta 
in  the  time  of  die  Nmeteendi  Dynasty  could 
l»Kfly  be  exidained,  if  die  Biblical  narrative 
had  been  compiled  two  or  three  hundred  years 
after  die  event,  m  an  age  i;dien  die  map  of 
Egypt  had  been  ahered  and  die  older  geography 
forgotten.  Still  less  could  it  be  wqilained,  if  the 
^ole  story  had  been  mvented  or  dirown  into 
Aape  in  Fklesdne.   There  was  no  adas  to 
which  die  Hefafew  writer  could  have  turned, 
mudi  less  an  adas  which  represented  geo-' 


9^    The  Geography  ol  the  PcnliUeiich 

graphkal  oonditkMit  tfatt  had  loag  lince  puMd 
•way.  History  fixes  the  Exodus  of  Israel  in 
the  epoch  of  the  Nineteenth  Dynasty,  and 
geography  assigns  it  to  die  same  date.  To 
diat  period,  and  to  diat  period  alone,  does  the 
gepgrai^y  of  the  Pentateuch  apply. 

The  £ut  admits  of  only  one  eq^anation. 
The  story  of  die  Exodus,  as  it  is  set  beforaus 
in  die  Old  Testament,  must  have  been  derived 
fiom  contemporaneous  written  documents,  and 
must  describe  events  which  actually  took  place. 
It  is  no  fiction  or  mydi,  no  legend  whose  only 
basb  to  ioSkAom  and  unsubstantial  tradition, 
but  history  m  tile  real  sense  of  the  word.  We 
may  rest  assured,  'criticbm'  notwitiiAanding, 
tiiat  Israel  was  once  in  Egypt,  and  that  the 
narrative  of  its  fi^t  under  tiie  leadendiip  of 
Moses  »  founded  on  sober  fiict 


CHAPTER  VII 

HEBREW  AND  BABYLONIAN  COSMOLOGY 

JT  hat  long  been  recognized  that  the  earlier 
chaptera  of  Genesis  have  a  Babylonian 
ceknuing  and  background.   Two  of  the  rivers 
of  Ptoidiie  are  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  and 
it  wai  at  the  Tower  of  Babel  that  the  confusion 
of  tongues  took  place.   The  discovery  of  the 
Babylonian  story  of  the  Deluge  proved  that 
Ae  Bibikal  account  of  the  Flood  also  had 
a  Babylonian  paraUel  and  prototype,  and  the 
disecufttry  of  the  Babylonian  story  of  the  Deluge 
was  fii^lowed  by  that  of  the  Babylonian  story 
of  creation,  which  showed  that  here  too  the 
cnndlMrai  tablets  and  the  Book  of  Genesis  were 
m  dose  accord   The  cosmology  of  Genesii 
lod»  bade  to  that  of  Babylonia, 

The  fragments  of  an  epic  poem  which 
contained  one  of  the  versions  of  the  Babylonian 
«tory  of  the  creation  were  discovered  by  Mr. 
Gtoigfi  Smith.  Other  fragments  have  since 
been  found,  more  especially  by  Mr.  L.W.  King; 


98  Hebrew  and  Bub^loiiian  Goiiiioloir 
•ad  we  now  pottett  the  poem  in  a  fidriy 
complete  form.   It  k  rtaXty  a  poem  in  liononr 
ci  Merodacfa,  the  patron  god  of  Baboon,  and 
must  have  originally  been  compoaed  by  a 
Babylonian  writer.  Aa  the  inhabitanta  of  Baby- 
lon regarded  their  patron  god  aa  the  creator, 
the  epic  naturally  incbdee  aa  aoeoimt  of  ^he 
way  in  vhich  the  heavena  and  the  earth  were 
made.  Babylon,  however,  was  a  comparativdy 
aiodem  city  in  Babyknia,  and  tta  god  did  not 
become  the  supreme  deity  of  the  oooatiy  mitQ 
his  city  had  been  made  a  capital  by  Khamnm- 
rabi.   Before  that  date  he  wm  but  ooe  amoi^ 
a  host  of  minor  divinitiei,  over  whom  the 
'great  godg'  of  the  older  eaactoariea  pieeided. 
Chief  among  these  were  Ann,  the  god  of  hea^ 
whose  seat  of  worship  was  Eredi»  hi  die  eentre 
of  Babylonia,  Bel,  the  god  of  tiie  earth  and  a^, 
who  was  adored  at  Nippur  ia  die  north,  and 
Ea  of  Eridu,  on  the  coast  of  die  Peraiatt  Gu^ 
the  cultnre-god  of  Chaldaea,  irfioee  domain  waa 
in  the  flood. 

When  Merodach  and  his  dty  usivped  the 
pbce  of  the  older  divinities  and  tiie  eaiiier 
centres  of  Babylonian  religion,  the  attributea  of 
die  older  gods  passed  to  him.  He  became  die 


BAbjrIoolan  Epic  of  CrMttoo  99 
son  of  Ea  and  took  upon  him  die  nme  and 
prerogatives  of  BcL  Both  Ea  tod  htti 
been  creators  in  the  cosmologies  of  tiiefr  m. 
spective  worshippers,  and  when  their  powen 
wer-  transferred  to  the  younger  deity  he 
necessarily  was  made  the  w  >     ")f  the  worid. 

But  in  the  epic  the  crea.  v   af  the  mid  ia 
but  an  episode  in  the  story  of  the  war  between 
TiamAt,  the  dragon  of  chaos  and  dafknen,  and 
Merodach,  the  champbn  of  the  gods  of  fight 
It  was  his  viccory  over  the  ^^mgon  which  gave 
Merodach  the  right  to  be  mtpieme  anoag  hit 
divine  peers  and  to  create  the  pfttent  woiid  of 
law  and  order.   The  heavens  and  earth 
fashioned  out  of  the  two  halves  of  his 
foe.  while '  bo!  •  were  driven  in  and '  wa.««^ 
set,  that  the  iuarchic  'fountains*  of  Tiamit 
might  not  again  break  forth  from  above  the 
ligament  and  destroy  iie  wocld  of  gods  and 
men. 

In  its  present  shape  the  epic  consisli  of 
seven  tablets  or  books.  The  first  is  aa 
introduction  embodying  the  atheistiepliaosQ|iiiy 
of  a  late  age,  when  the  divine  personages  of 
mythology  had  been  resolved  into  die  mirterial 
forces  ^fid  elements  of  Nature^  and    ntfcn  mm 


100  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  GMmoIogy 

regarded  as  a  process  of  sd^evolution*  The 
second  and  third  books  recount  the  war  of  &e 
gods,  and  the  fourth  ends  with  die  victory  of 
Merodach  and  the  creation  of  the  heavenly 
firmament  The  fifth  tablet  describes  the 
appointment  of  the  heavenly  bodies  for  signs 
and  seasons  and  days  and  years.  They  were 
not  created  like  the  firmament,  since  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Babylonians  the  sun  and  moon  and  stara 
were  deities,  and  consequently  had  come  into 
existence  at  the  same  time  as  Merodach  himself. 
What  the  creatcnr  did,  dierefore,  was  to  fix  didr 
places  and  duty,  to  'ordain  Ae  year'  with  its 
twelve  months,  and  to  bind  the  whole  togedier 
by  inviolable  laws,  'so  that  none  m^t  enr  or 
ever  go  astray.' 

In  the  sixth  book  tiie  creation  of  man  is 
narrated.  Man  was  made  of  bone  whidi  die 
god  had  fashioned,  and  of  the  bkxxi  of  1^ 
which  he  had  drawn  from  his  own  veins.  For 
Babylonian  religion  held  diat  the  gods  were  in 
the  likmess  of  men,  and  hence  diat,  oonvenely, 
men  were  made  m  the  image  of  die  gods.  It 
was  in  order  'that  die  service  (tf  die  gods  mi^t 
be  performed  and  dieir  shrines  (builty  that  man 
was  created  and  bidden  to  'inhabit'  die  eardi. 


Ttemlt  101 

The  seventh  and  last  book  of  the  epic  is 
a  hymn  of  praise  sung  by  the  gods  in  honour 
of  Merodach,  in  which  the  attributes  and  powers 
of  the  other  '  great  gods '  are  transferred  to  him. 
It  formed  originally  no  part  of  the  story  of  the 
creation  or  even  of  the  legend  of  Merodach ;  it 
was  an  independent  poem,  going  back  to  pre- 
Semitic  times,  and  incorporated  by  the  author 
of  the  epic  in  his  work.    Fragments  have  come 
down  to  us  of  some  of  the  commentaries  that 
were  written  upon  the  original  text.    All  that 
the  author  of  the  epic  has  done  has  been  to 
tell  us  that  it  was  sung  in  the  council-chamber 
of  the  gods,  and  to  add  a  few  lines  of  epilogue 
at  its  end. 

Tiamdt,  the  dragon  of  chaos,  is  the  im- 
personation of  the  primaeval  deep,  of  that 
formless  abyss  of  waters  inwhich  the  Babylonians 
saw  the  beginning  of  all  things.  Babylonian 
theories  of  creation  first  grew  up  in  the  city  of 
Eridu,  the  primitive  sea-port  of  the  country, 
where  new  land  was  continually  being  formed 
by  the  accumulation  of  silt.  We  possess  a  pre- 
Semitic,  Sumerian  account  of  the  creation,  which 
differs  entirely  from  that  of  the  epic,  and 
constituted  one  of  the  hymns  that  were  sung  k 


102  H«««w  and  Babylonian  Cosmology 
the  temple  of  Ea  at  Eridu.  In  it  Ea  was  itffl 
the  creator  of  the  world ;  he  is  the  lord  tiic 
deep,  out  of  which  the  dry  land  arose  through 
the  settlement  of  mud  around  a  bundle  of  reeds 
that  the  creator  had  planted  in  the  dioreless  sea. 
Once  the  land  was  formed,  Ea  stodced  it  widi 
'the  beast  of  the  field'  and  'the green  herb'; 
of  the  creation  of  the  heavens  no  wc»d  is 
said. 

The  cosmological  legends  of  Babylonia  must 
have  been  known  to  Abraham  before  he  left  Ur 
of  the  Chaldees.   They  were  pictured  on  d» 
^l\s  of  the  Babylonian  temples  and  taught  in 
the  Babylonian  schools.    With  the  rest  of 
Babylonian  culture  they  passed  to  die  West 
Even  in  Upper  Egypt  fragments  of  Bab^ooian 
legends  have  been  found  among  the  cuneiform 
tablets  of  Tel  el-Amama,  and  die  points  widdi 
separate  the  words  in  them  one  feom  another 
indicate  that  they  must  have  been  used  as 
exercises  at  school.   Long  before  the  age  of 
Moses  the  Babylonian  theory  of  creation  and 
the  myths  and  poems  which  embodied  it  woukl 
have  been  fiuniliar  to  the  educated  native  of 
Canaan. 

A  Carman  scholar,  Gunkel,  has  demoostmted 


that  there  are  references  to  the  Babylonian  story 
of  the  creation  and  the  dragon  Tiamit  in  pas- 
sages of  the  Old  Testament,  which  the  most 
sceptical  criticism  allows  to  be  of  early  date. 
There  is  no  longer  any  need  to  prove  that 
Jewish  writers  could  have  become  acquainted 
with  the  cosmology  of  Babylonia  only  during 
Ae  Exile.  That  it  was  known  in  Palestine 
fong  before  that  period  is  now  admitted  on  all 
hands.  Those  who,  like  the  contemporaries  of 
Moses,  could  read  the  cuneiform  tablets  of 
Babylonia  would  have  been  familiar  not  only 
with  the  general  belief  of  the  Babylonians 
concerning  the  creation  of  the  world,  but  also 
with  the  literary  form  or  forms  which  that  |)eUe£ 
had  assumed. 

The  resemblance  between  the  Babylonian 
Epic  of  the  Creation  and  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Book  of  Genesis  is  too  striking  not  to  have 
attracted  attention  from  the  outset.  In  both 
alike  there  is  '  in  the  beginning  *  a  watery  chaos, 
above  which  the  darkness  brooded,  while  *  the 
earth  was  without  form  and  void.'  In  both 
alike  the  creation  of  the  present  world  com- 
mences with  the  creation  of  light ;  it  was  the 
de^niction  of  the  powers  of  ^arknfss  by  the 


I04  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  GosmoloKy 
gods  of  light  that  made  it  posnlile  for  tiie 
Babylonian  creator  to  begin  his  w«jriL   In  both 
there  is  a  firmament  dividing  the  imprisoned 
waters  above  it  from  the  waters  beneath,  and  In 
both,  too,  the  creation  of  the  heavens  and  earth 
precede  the  appointment  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
to  mark  and  measure  time.  In  both  the  creation 
of  man  is  the  final  consummation  of  the  creator's 
acts,  and  the  artificial  division  erf  the  Babylonian 
epic  into  seven  books  CQrreq)onds  widi  the 
seven  days  of  the  Hebrew  account 

This,  however,  is  not  all  With  aU  Ae  reaem- 
blanw  that  exists  between  die  Babj^onian  and 
Ae  Biblical  narratives,  there  is  yet  a  profound 
difference.    Yet  the  difference  is  one  whfch 
indicates  not  only  the  priority  of  die  Babyl<mian 
version,  but  also  the  dehbeiate  purpose  of  the 
Hebrew  writer  to  contravene  and  conm  it 
We  have  seen,  for  instance,  that  in  both  accounts 
the  heavenly  bodies  are  appointed  to  OMsasure 
time,  and  that  the  appointment  foHows  not  only 
the  creation  of  the  heavens  and  earth,  but  also 
of  light  Itself.  Indeed,  in  the  Hebrewcosmology 
It  even  follows  the  creation  of  vegetation.  ^ 
fact  has  often  been  a  cause  of  dMiculty,  since 
according  to  the  Book  of  Genesis  the  Ml 


Gcnctlt  VIcir  of  QrttliOD  105 

bodies  were  created  on  the  fourth  day  as  well 
as  set  to  measure  time. 

But  the  difficulty  is  solved  when  we  compare 
the  Biblical  account  with  the  Babylonian  epic. 
Here  the  sun  and  the  moon  and  stars  could  not 
be  created;  they  were  goc  ,  and  consequently 
had  existed  before  the  creation  of  the  world  was 
betyun.  But  for  the  writf .  01  Genesis  there  was 
but  one  God,  and  the  heavenly  bodies  were  as 
much  His  creation  as  the  green  herb  or  the 
beast  of  the  field.   It  is  probably  for  this  reason 
that  he  avoids  calling  the  sun  and  moon  by 
names  which  in  Babylonian  belief  were  the 
names  of  deities ;  for  him  the  '  sun '  and  the 
•moon'  are  the  'two  great  lights,'  while  'the  stars' 
take  the  place  of  the  goddess  Istar,  who  in  the 
Babylonian  story  stood  at  the  side  of  the  'sun  V 
and  •  mooii.'    But  in  thus  ascribing  the  creation 
of  thn  celestial  bodies  to  the  one  and  only  God 
the  Biblical  writer  has  been  unable  to  avoid  the 
difficulty  of  making  the  morning  -  .^d  evening  to 
have  followed  one  anotl  -r,  anc    igeiati  jn  to 
have  come  into  being  before  the  sun  or  the 
moon.    In  the  Babylonian  virsion  evening  and 
morning  naturally  succeeded  each  other  as  soon 
as  the  gods  of  light  appeared  upon  the  scene. 


io6  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  Gosmology 
and  the  heavenly  bodies  wem  merely  appdnted 
afterwards  to  mark  out  the  seasons  of  the  year : 
the  fact  that  the  writer  in  Genesis,  while  dedar- 
ing  that  their  appointment  was  accompanied  by 
their  creation,  nevertheless  adheres  to  the  order 
of  creation  as  described  in  the  Babylonian  epic, 
IS  a  plain  proof  that  that  order  of  creation  was 
already  known  to  him,  and  was  too  firmly  estab- 
lished to  be  altered. 

But  it  is  also  a  proof  that  he  has  changed  and 
corrected  the  Babylonian  version  with  ddibemte 
intention.   The  heavenly  bodies,  he  imi^dthr 
teaches,  are  creatures,  and  not  gods.    Even  at 
the  risk  of  throwing  the  story  of  creation  into 
confusion  and  introducing  into  it  dements  of 
difficulty,  he  has  formally  contiadicted  and 
denied  the  polytheism  of  his  Babylonian  pro- 
totype.   The  polytheistic  elements  it  contained 
are  not  merely  rejected,  they  are  contradicted 
and  denied. 

The  same  fact  is  apparent  in  other  parts  d 
the  Biblical  cosmology.  The  polytheism  and 
mythology  of  the  Babylonian  theory  are  met  irith 
a  stem  negative,  along  with  the  matmlism  <rf 
the  preface  to  the  epic.  The  legend  of  the  war 
m  heaven  between  Merodach  and  Tiamit  finds 


Gcmtit  Gotmoiofy  107 

no  place  in  the  narrative  of  Genesis,  whatever 
references  to  it  may  be  discoverable  elsewhere 
in  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  declaration  that 
man  was  created  to  worship  the  gods  and  build 
their  sanctuaries  is  similarly  excluded  from  it. 
There  is  no  dragon  Tiam4t  out  of  whom,  as  in 
the  Babylonian  l<»gend,  the  firmament  of  heaven 
may  be  mar^e,  even  though  the  Babylonian  con- 
ception of  a  firmament  is  retaine  d,  and  equally 
there  is  no  impersonation  of  the  deep  whose 
waters  should  be  gathered  into  seas.  By  the 
side  of  the  Creator  of  Genesis  no  other  god  can 
exist. 

The  materialistic  philosophy  of  the  introduc- 
tion to  the  epic  is  banished  from  the  pages  of 
Genesis  like  the  polytheistic  mythology  which 
accompanies  it.  It  expressed  beliefs  that  had 
long  been  current  in  the  philosophic  schools  of 
Babylonia,  and  endeavoured  to  harmoni2e  the 
religious  legends  of  the  people  with  the  more 
scientific  knowledge  of  the  few.  The  epic 
commences  with  the  description  of  a  formless 
matter,  independent  of  the  Creator,  generating 
itself  and  developing  into  the  divine.  '  In  the 
beginning  was  the  deep,  which  begat  the  heavens 
and  the  earth  the  chaos  of  TiamAt,  who  was  the 


io8  Hebrew  and  Babylonlwi  Cofinolofy 

mother  of  them  aa'  Against  tWi,  on  the  fere- 
front  of  Genesis  stands  the  dedamtkm  that  'in 
the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth.    The  earth  was  indeed  a  formless  chaos 
resting  on  the  daric  waters  of  tiie  primaeval  deep 
-thus  far  tlie  conceptions  of  the  Babylonian 
cosmology  are  adopted,  but  the  chao«  and  the 
deep  were  not  the  first  of  things;  God  was 
already  there,  and  His  breath  or  spirit  brooded 
over  the  abyss.   While  the  letter  of  Ae  Baby, 
loman  story  has  been  followed,  the  spirit  of  it 
has  been  changed.   The  Hebww  writer  m«st 
have  had  the  Babylonian  ve«ion  before  him,  and 
intentionally  given  an  uncompromisuig  denial 
to  all  m  It  that  impugned  the  omnipotence  and 
unity  of  God.  «««  ««« 

It  is  true  that  one  or  two  expiessions  have 
been  left  m  the  Biblical  nanative  which  are 
denved  from  the  polytheism  of  its  Babylonian 
prototype.   The  name  of  Tehom, 'the  deep.' 
the  Babylonian  TiamAt,  is  used  without  the 
article,  and  we  read  that  God  said:  'Let  i« 
make  man  in  our  image.'  But  such  expressions 
merely  show  how  closely  the  letter  of  the  Baby- 
onian  system  of  cosmology  has  been  adhered 
to;  theymipairinnowaythestemmomrtheism 


of  the  Biblical  narrative,  and  only  serve  to  bring 
into  greater  relief  the  twofold  fact  that  the 
cosmology  of  Genesis  is  the  cosmology  of 
Babylonia  in  a  fundamentally  changed  form. 

Perhaps  nowhere  is  the  change  of  form  more 
striking  than  in  the  different  conception  of  the 
mode  of  creating  which  distinguishes  the  Book 
of  Genesis  and  the  Babylonian  epic.  In  the 
epic  creation  is  either  the  result  of  evolution 
on  the  part  of  godless  matter,  or  else  the  creator 
works  like  a  craftsman,  fashioning  the  universe 
out  of  pre-existing  materials  and  putting  it 
under  bolt  and  key.  In  the  Book  of  Genesis, 
on  the  other  hand,  God  speaks,  and  it  is  done. 
Creation  by  the  word  is  indeed  known  to  the 
author  of  the  epic ;  in  the  assembly  of  the  gods 
Merodach  is  described  as  destroying  and  re- 
creating by  the  simple  power  of  his  word,  and 
thereby  proving  himself  a  fitting  champion  of 
them  in  the  struggle  with  the  dragon;  but  in 
the  actual  creation  of  the  world  the  word  is 
never  employed.  I  n  the  mind  of  the  Babylonian 
polytheist  the  gods  were  in  the  image  of  men, 
and  as  men  therefore  they  were  compelled  to 
work. 

The  conclusion  to  which  a  com|mison  of  the 


110  Hihwr  «d  BdnteiM  Co«,^ 

Hebrew  and  Babylonian  account,  of  the  ocatiaa 
Has  Aus  brought  us  is  unmistakeabk.  On  the 
«.e  hand  the  cosmology  of  Genesis  Prewpp^ 
the  cosmology  of  Babylonia,  the  samrcoo. 
ceptions  underlie  both,  and  the  watery  abys.  of 

natve,  of  Endu.    But  on  the  other 
between  the  two,  as  they  lie  before  us  in  the 
Bible  and  m  the  cuneiform  literature  of  Baby^ 
lonia,  there  is  an  impassable  gult   The  eoi- 
mology  of  Babylonia  fa  thiclcly  ovetgrown  «ul 
mtertwmed  with  polytheistic,  mythologial.  uid 
wen  materialfatic  elements;  in  the  cosmoloey 
^Genesis  these  are  all  swept  away,  and  in  pUm 
of  Aem  the  doctrine  is  proclaimed  that  there 
»  but  one  God.  the  Creator  of  the  whole 

The  same  contrast  meets  us  elsewhere,  when 
we  examme  the  religious  literature  of  Babylonia 
and  the  contents  of  the  Old  Testament  side  by 
side.  Babylonian  literature  is  full  of  hymns  and 
penitential  psalms,  of  prayers  and  addresses  to 
Ae  deity  which  breathe  a  deep  spiritual  earnest- 
ncss,  and  often  rise  in  accents  of  passionate 
devotion.    From  time  to  time  we  find  language 
m  them  which  reminds  us  of  the  psalmTS 


Tilt  SfMt  Ql  (koMlt  m 

David  or  even  the  evaogdiaa  attenncet  of  an 
Iniah,  and  we  are  tempted  to  aak  whether  after 
an  there  was  to  profoend  a  r^out  difference 
at  we  have  heen  taught  to  believe  between  the 
hisphratioa  of  the  *duMen  people'  and  that  of 
dieir  Semitic  khidred,  whedier  after  all  the 
•pWt  of  die  Hebrew  icriptiirei  may  not  have 
been  the  common  heritage  of  the  Semitic  lace. 

Bat  hardly  it  the  question  adted  before  we  are 
toddenly  bfo^ght,  aa  h  wm,  to  a  stand  by 
pasnget  and  woidt  that  express  the  grossest 
polytheism  or  the  piierilifo  of  a  giotesque  and 
ttnpid  superstition,   ftissionate  outpourings  of 
deqp  ^liritnal  oootritioo  for  sb  or  the  most 
exalted  deseriptioos  of  the  divhie  attributes  are 
iPiogM  with  expressions  ofbdiefthat  are  at  once 
<fegndu^  and  grotesque  To  us  the  mixture 
seems  inoonqprdiensibie,  to  Oie  Babylonian  it 
wasnatundandris^t  His  nund  was  so  steeped 
in  polydietstie  bdie&  and  pnu^ioes,  m  the 
sl^>arBt^bns  of  magic  and  the  dark  rites  of 
sorcery,  that  he  could  see  no  mcompatibility 
between  them  and  ^  purer  and  more  spiritual 
thoughts  diat  came  from  time  to  time  to  his 

soul  from  the  lig^  *  ^  lighteth  every  man  tiiat 
coBBelii  mto       wofid'  The  Israelite  staod 


iu  Hrfmr  and  BiMoiilM  CoMioIojy 

alone  among  the  Semitic  peoples  of  the  andeiit 
East  in  maintaining  that  besides  Yahveh  there 
was  no  other  god,  and  that  the  law  of  Yahveh 

was  a  law  of  righteousness. 

And  yet  the  Israelite  was  not  better  educated 
or  more  advanced  in  philosophic  thought  than 
his  kinsfolk  in  Babylonia  -nd  Canaan.    On  the 
contrary,  he  stood  on  a  lower  level  of  culture  and 
civilization,  and  his  legal  code,  as  we  have  aeen, 
implies  a  less  developed  social  organization  than 
that  which  Babylonia  possessed  several  centuries 
earlier.    How,  then,  can  we  explain  the  giil( 
fathomless  and  impassable,  which  lies  between 
the  cosmology  of  Genesis  and  the  cosmology  of 
Babylonia,  or  between  the  Old  Testament  litera- 
ture  as  a  whole  and  the  religious  literature  of 
the  Euphrates,  without  calling  in  the  aid  of  an 
agency  other  than  human  ?  Whence  came  the 
revelation  of  the  true  nature  of  God,  and  His 
relation  to  man,  which  is  a  nnounced  in  the  first 
verse  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  vvhich  stamps  the 
literature  of  the  Old  Testainent  to  the  end? 

It  was  certainly  not  from  Babylonia  or  Canaan 
that  it  was  derived,  still  less  from  Egypt;  like 
the  gift  of  reason  and  speech  which  distinguishes 
man  from  the  lower  animals,  it  remains  solitary 


•ad  wUque,  a  fret  which  we  must  accept,  but 
TO«  purdy  Ittmiwi  science  has  failed  to  explain 

l^LTt^^^  ^       ^"P"  of  the 
«iem«m  that  underlie  the  fact;  but 

i^^IIT        n^terial  elements  and  the  fact 
»w  ttwe  it  a  break  of  connexion  which  the 
at  pratent  known  to  us  are  unable  to 

unite. 

T^ie  revdation  of  monotheism  is  not  confiu 
to  the  oomology  of  Genesis  or  the  writings  c 
Aekter  projActi.  We  find  it  also  in  the  Ten 
^  Ccw««id«eiita.  which  even  the 
critic  •Bowtiiiiobdieve  were  Mosaic  in  origin. 
It  go«  bMk  to  tiie  Mosaic  age,  to  the  time 
fled  fiom  Egypt  and  was  still  under 
flie  tutdage  of  tbe  wfldemess.   On  the  other 
hand.  ^  co«no^  ;gy  and  legends,  the  myths 
•nd  godt  of  Babykmia  were  known  to  the 

SSn."!*^!!!?^*^^   Long  before  the 
caie  tbe  Hebrew  liteiature  which  has  survived 
to  us  diows  tet  die  Itraditish  people  also  were 
ao^uunted  widi  die  cosmological  theories 

a^^fdiotogfcal  monsters  of  Babyloma.  The 
f^^*»«n  story  of  the  creation  could  h?ve 
been  k^  to  the  great  Hebrew  legislator,  ;i .  { 
it  It  quite  at  easy  to  believe  that  it  was  he  V  ao 

R 


114  Hebrew  and  Babylonian  Cosvadlogy 

found  in  it  the  material  for  his  work,  as  that  this 
was  done  by  some  later  and  unknown  author. 

It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  condudon  that  the 
writer  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  had  a 
cuneiform  document  before  him  wbidi  he  was 
able  to  read ;  and  we  know  of  no  periods  when 
this  could  have  been  the  case  except  the  Mosaic 
and  the  epoch  of  the  Exile.    But  the  epoch  of 
the  Exile  is  excluded,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
at  all  events  for  the  very  sufficient  one  that 
no  Jew  would  then  have  borrowed  horn  his 
enslavers  a  story  of  the  creatbn  which  was 
saturated  with  their  superstitions  and  idolatry. 
The  simplest  hjrpothesis  is,  after  all,  diat 
v^ch  agrees  with  tradition. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  RELIGIOUS  EVOLUTION 

RIVEN  from  its  first  assnmption  of  the  late 
...  ^"^^  °f  '^"ng  for  literary  puipo^t  the 
^.gher  criticism'  has  Men  badfo2TJo^ 
tnne  of  evolution.  Evolution  is  At  keynote  of 
modem  science,  both  physical  and  p.,d.olo«cal, 
Ae  mag,cal  key  with  which  it  hope,  to  S 
the  secrets  of  the  univene.   There  hw  been 
evolution  and  development  in  hUto™.  a.  wdl 
^ jn  the  forms  of  life,  i„  U..  ^ 
materul  umve«e  or  in  the  pwce«e.  of  thought 
There  must  have  been  evolution  al«>  i„ 
rehgious  and  moral  ideas,  in  politial  concep- 
tions  and  theological  dogmas.   If  o^^ 
could  discover  its  law,  we  dK«ld  be  to 
.T  "  has  followed,  and  know  what 


The  disciples  of  the  'h«her  critlei«n  '  have 
assumed  not  only  that  the  law  i.  diaco«,rtte 

H  a 


ii6  Thi  Dodriiic  of  Rcfifious  Evolutioa 

but  also  that  they  have  themselves  discovered 
it  They  know  precisely  how  religious  ideas 
must  have  devdoped  in  the  past,  and  can  con- 
sequently determine  the  relative  age  of  the 
various  forms  in  which  they  are  presented  to 
us.  Certain  conceptions  of  the  priesthood  or 
the  sanctuary,  the  'critic'  tells  us,  are  older 
than  others ;  dierefore,  if  there  are  books  or 
passages  which  do  not  conform  to  his  ruling, 
they  must  be  forced  to  do  so  by  an  alteration 
of  die  traditional  dates.  What  the  critic  believes 
to  have  been  the  order  of  evolution  is-,  thus 
made  the  measure  of  their  age  and  authenticity. 

But  it  does  not  follow  that  what  the  '  critic ' 
believes  must  have  been  the  order  of  evolution 
was  necessarily  so.  In  all  probability  it  was 
not  The  European  critic  of  the  twentieth 
century,  writing  in  his  library  of  printed  books, 
has  litde  in  common  with  the  Oriental  of  the 
ancient  world.  The  thoughts  of  the  one  are 
not  the  thoughts  of  the  other ;  the  very  world 
in  which  thay  move  is  not  the  same. 

The  'critical  assumption,'  in  fact,  is  an  in- 
version of  the  true  method  of  science.  We 
must  first  know  what  was  die  order  of  the 
I^enomena  before  we  can  discover  the  law  of 


'Grflieal'  Aatumpdons  117 

evolution  which  they  have  followed.  It  is  only 
when  we  have  ascertained  what  forms  of  life 
or  matter  have  succeeded  others  that  we  can 
trace  in  them  a  process  of  development.  We 
cannot  reverse  the  method,  and  determine  the 
sequence  of  the  phenomena  from  a  hypothetical 
law  of  evolution. 

This,  however,  is  just  what  the  'higher 
critics'  of  the  Old  Testament  have  attempted 
to  do.  They  have  assumed  that  what  seems 
to  them  the  natural  order  in  the  development 
of  spiritual  or  moral  ideas  was  the  actual  order, 
and  they  have  mutilated  and  re-dated  the 
literary  material  in  order  to  support  the 
assumption. 

It  has  seemed  to  them  that  the  institution 
of  an  Aaroniu  priesthood  must  have  grown 
out  of  an  earlier  Levitical  system,  and  that  the 
codification  of  the  law  of  Israel  must  have 
followed  and  not  preceded  the  development 
of  prophecy;  and,  consequently,  setting  tradi- 
tion at  defiance,  they  have  remodelled  the 
ancient  history  of  Israel,  rewritten  its  sacred 
books,  and  forced  the  evidence  into  conformity 
with  their  historical  scheme.  What  aicfaae- 
ology  has  to  say  to  their  second  wamm^^ 


ii8  The  Doctrine  of  Religious  Evolution 

that  of  the  late  date  of  the  codificatioii  of  tiie 
Mosaic  Law,  we  have  aheady  seen ;  when  the 
ritual  code  of  Babylonia  is  discovered,  it  is  likely 
that  the  '  critical  *  theory  of  die  priority  of  the 
Levidcal  to  the  Aaronic  priesthood  will  fare 
no  better  than  the  theory  that  the  Law  is  later 
than  tne  Prophets. 

In  fact,  the  whole  application  of  a  supposed 
law  of  evolution  to  the  religious  and  secular 
history  of  the  ancient  Oriental  world  is  founded 
on  what  we  now  know  to  have  been  a  huge 
mistake.  The  Mosaic  age,  instead  of  coming 
at  the  dawn  of  ancient  Oriental  culture,  really 
belongs  to  the  evening  of  its  decay.  The 
Hebrew  legislator  was  surrounded  on  all  ades 
by  the  influences  of  a  decadent  dvilizatbn. 
Religious  systems  and  ideas  had  followed  one 
another  for  centuries;  the  ideas  had  been 
pursued  to  their  logical  oMiclusions,  and  die 
systons  had  been  woriced  out  in  a  variety 
forms.  In  Egypt  and  Bab^onia  alike  there 
was  degeneracy  rather  than  progress,  retrogres- 
sion  rather  than  develofmient  The  actual 
condition  of  the  Oriental  worid  in  the  age  <^ 
Moses,  as  it  has  beoi  revealed  to  us  by  ar^ae- 
okigy,  leaves  litde  room  for  the  partioilar  kind 


'Gfltieia'  AwmnpHoni  119 

of  evolution  of  which  the '  higher  criticism '  has 
dreamed 

But  in  truth  the  archaeological  discoveries 
of  the  last  half-dozen  years  in  Egypt  and  Krete 
have  once  for  all  discredited  the  claim  of 
*  criticism '  to  apply  its  theories  of  development 
to  the  settlement  of  chronological  or  historical 
questions.  It  is  not  very  long  since  it  was 
assuring  us  that  the  civilization  of  Egypt  had 
little  or  no  existence  before  the  age  of  the 
Fourth  Dynasty,  that  no  records  had  been  kept 
or  monuments  preserved  of  so  'prehistoric* 
a  period,  and  that  the  kings  whom  tradition 
assigned  to  it  were  but  the  '  half-febulous ' 
fictions  of  later  centuries. 

And  yet  these  half-fabulous  fictions  have 
turned  out  to  have  lived  in  the  full  blaze  of 
Egyptian  culture ;  their  tombs  and  public  v/orks 
were  on  a  grandiose  scale,  their  art  was  far 
advanced,  their  political  organization  complete. 
The  art  of  writing  was  not  only  known,  but  an 
alphabet  had  been  invented,  and  a  cursive  hand 
formed.  A  chronological  register  of  time  was 
kept  year  by  year,  and  the  height  of  each 
successive  Nile  minutely  recorded.  The  civiliza- 
tion of  Egypt  in  the  reign  of  Menes  was  as 


i20  The  Doctrine  of  RcUgious  Evolution 
high  as  it  was  under  the  Phanoht  of  the 
Fourth  Dynasty.  The  applicatioii  (tf  the  amont 
of  the  'higher  criticism'  to  the  eariier  history 
of  Egypt  has  signally  fiuled. 

Nor  is  it  better  when  we  turn  to  the  eastern 
basm  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  the  islands  and 
coasts  which  were  afterwards  Greek.  Here, 
we  were  told,  there  was  nothing  but  die  daric- 
ness  of  an  illiterate  barbarism  before  the  b^n- 
nings  of  the  classical  age.  The  traditions 
which  had  survived  of  an  earlier  period  were 
resolved  into  myths  and  &brications,  and  we 
were  bidden  to  believe  that  the  pre-Hdlenic 
history  of  the  JEgean  could  never  be  reooverad, 
for  none  had  existed.  A  knowledge  of  writing, 
we  were  assured,  was  unknown  in  the  in 
which  the  Homerk  poems  first  todt  ^pe, 
and  art  sprang  ready-made,  like  Adiena  horn 
the  head  of  Zeus,  in  rhe  st'»r  ny  epoch  of  the 
Persian  wars.  Backed  by  his  iatwurite  appeal 
to  the  want  of  evidcacc,  ar  i  %r;ified  with  his 
doctrine  of  development  and  his  assumption  of 
the  late  introduction  writing^  the  'critic'  was 
a»ifidait  t  at  his  n^^ative  condusiotts  oosid 
never  be  gainsaid,  and  that  idiat  had  rttffi*d 
for  the  earlier  history  of  Greek  lands  had 


Hit  Awikminf  t2t 

been  dismissed  by  him  for  ever  to  the  reaUn 
of  myth. 

The  awakening  has  come  with  a  vengeance. 
The  scepticism  of  the  'critic'  has  been  proved 
to  have  been  but  the  measure  of  his  own 
ignorance,  the  want  of  evidence  to  have  been 
merely  his  own  ignorance  of  it.  The  spade  of 
the  excavator  in  Krete  has  effected  more  in 
three  or  four  years  than  the  labours  and  canons 
of  the  'critic'  in  half  a  century.  The  whole 
febric  he  had  raised  has  gone  down  like  a 
house  of  cards,  and  with  it  the  theories  of 
development  of  which  he  felt  so  confident 

Not  only  have  we  discovered  that  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  empire  and  splendour  of  Minos  were 
right,  that  even  the  stories  of  the  Labyrinth  and 
the  Minotaur  had  a  foundation  of  fact,  but  we 
have  also  learnt  that  the  art  of  classical  Greece 
was  no  self-evolved  thing,  but  as  much  a 
renaissance  as  the  European  renaissance  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  The  culture  of  the  lands 
of  Krete  in  the  age  of  Moses  was  equal  to 
that  of  their  Egyptian  contemporaries;  their 
architectural  conceptions  were  far  advanced, 
their  fayence  and  inlays  of  the  first  order,  the 
art  of  their  engraved  gems  luuiufpassed  even  in 


122  The  Doctrine  of  ReUgkNii  Evolutioii 

die  pdmiett  dayi  of  later  Greece.  Indeed, 
the  age  of  Motes  the  m  of  the  eastern 
Mediterranean  was  ahready  decaying,  strange 
conventional  designs  and  figures  had  come  into 
existence,  and  forms  which  we  associate  with 
the  art  of  the  Roman  empire  were  already  in 
ikshion. 

As  for  ilUteracy,  there  was  writing  and  in 
plenty.  No  less  than  tiiree  different  scripts— if 
not  four— were  in  use  in  Krete  alone,  and  traces 
of  their  use  have  been  met  with  as  £u*  nordi  as 
Bceotia  and  the  Troad.  The  day  taUets  of 
Babylonia  were  employed  as  wdl  as  die  p^>yri 
of  Egypt  for  writing  puiposes,  and  charac- 
ters of  a  Imear  script  were  bscribei  ^  ink  on 
shreds  (tf  pottery.  And  att  diis  jtoitude  of 
literary  culture  and  luxury  was  being  enjoyed 
by  the  islands  and  coasdands  of  die  eastern 
Mediterranean  centuries  before  Homer  toid  of 
its  departed  glcmes,  or  Helienic  civilization  took 
up  agam  the  broken  threads  of  die  past  The 
devetopment  whUAi  the  *  critic '  has  imagined— 
a  develc^mumt  out  of  barbarinn,  illiteracy,  and 
the  rude  b^lnnings  of  art—is  «mply  a  dream 
and  nothing  more. 

It  would  be  affectatioQ,  howem,  if  db- 


TIm  Mm  IMiocI  123 

ingenuousneM  to  pretend  that  the  work  of  the 
*  critic  *  has  been  altogether  barren.  This  is  far 
finom  bcmg  the  case.  We  have  only  to  compare 
a  history  of  early  Greece,  as  it  was  written 
a  hundred  years  ago,  with  the  history  of  early 
Greece,  as  it  is  being  rewritten  by  archaeology 
to-day,  to  see  how  much  there  was  which  needed 
to  be  deared  away.  We  can  never  return  to 
the  point  of  view  of  our  forefathers  in  regard 
cither  to  Greek  or  to  Hebrew  history. 

But  where  'criticism'  went  wrong  was  in  its 
belief  that,  unaided,  it  could  solve  all  the  prob- 
lems of  history.  The  result  was  the  adoption 
of  a  &]se  method,  resting,  in  default  of  any- 
Aing  better,  on  assumptions  and  theories  which 
have  been  shown  to  be  without  foundation,  an 
exaggerated  scorn  of  tradition,  and  a  neglect 
<rf  tiiose  &cts  of  archaeology  which  are  the  only 
scientific  criteria  we  possess  for  testing  the  truth 
of  the  traditions  of  the  past. 

But  within  the  lawful  domain  of  philology  the 
work  of  the  critic  has  been  fruitful.  We  have 
learatmuch  about  the  text  of  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures  which  was  hidden  from  our  fathers, 
and  above  all  we  have  come  to  take  a  truer  and 
mare  intelligent  view  both  of  the  text  itself  and 


124  The  Doctrine  of  Religious  Evolution 

of  the  literature  to  which  it  belongs.  We  h«v« 
learnt  that  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  are  at 
truly  a  literature  as  the  classical  productioiis  of 
Greece  or  Rome,  that  they  were  written  by  men, 
not  by  machines,  and  that  they  reflect  &e 
individual  qualities  of  those  who  wrote  them, 
and  the  colouring  of  the  various  ages  at  idiicfa 
they  were  composed. 

If  criticism  has  effected  nothing  else,  it  has 
obliged  us  to  look  more  closely  into  the 
language  and  relations  of  the  books  with  whidi 
it  deals,  not  to  rest  satisfied  untii  we  can  under- 
stand the  real  meaning  of  the  author  and  the 
connexion  of  his  words  with  the  context  in 
which  they  are  found.  <  There  was  a  time 
when  the  Christian  ir^;arded  his  Bible  as  the 
orthodox  Hindu  r^fards  his  Veda,  as  a  smgle 
indivisible  and  mechanically-inspired  bode,  ifo- 
tatcd  throughout  by  the  Deity,  and  from  wbkh 
all  human  elements  are  jealously  excluded.  ^ 
^    But  heathen  theories  of  inspiration  oug^t  to 
have  no  place  in  the  Christian  oonsdoumess.) 
Christ  was  perfect  Man  as  well  as  perfect  God, 
and  in  the  sacred  books  of  our  &ith  we  are 
similarly  called  upon  to  recognize  a  human 
element  as  well  as  a  divine.   The  doctrine  of 


'Grttidni' Gonfiktt  Willi  Fallh  tas 

vtMi  inefiiiiqr  k  Hbdn  and  not  Clirietian, 
•nd  if  we  mAnk  it  we  nroit,  with  tiie  Hindu, 
fellow  it  out  to  its  logical  oondmioii,  duit  tlie 

inernat  wordi  cuuiot  be  truiikted  into  anodier 
tongue  or  even  committed  to  writing. 

Neverthdeat,  between  the  recognition  of  the 
hmnen  dement  in  tiie  Old  Tettunent»  end  the 
'  criticel '  contention  diet  die  Hebrew  Scriptures 
are  filled  with  myths  and  historical  bhmders, 
pious  frauds  and  ante-dated  documents,  the 
distance  is  great  Beyond  a  certda  pdnt  die 
condusions  of  'criticism'  come  into  conflict  widi 
artides  (tf  die  Chrisdan  fiudt  The  New 
Testament  not  only  presupposes,  but  also  rests 
upon  the  Old  Testament,  and,  in  addition  to  this, 
the  method  and  prindples  idiich  have  resolved 
die  nanratives  of  die  Old  Testament  mto  myths, 
or  the  illusions  of  credulous  Orientals,  must 
have  the  same  result  when  applied  to  die  New 
Testament  From  a  *cridcal'  point  of  view 
the  miraculous  birth  of  our  Lord  rests  upon  no 
better  evidence  than  die  story  of  die  exodus 
out  of  Egypt 

'Criticism'  prt^esses  not  to  deal  with  die 
abstract  quei^<m  <^  the  possibility  of  miradm 
But  it  ^>es  so  indirectly  by  undermining  the 


ii6  Tht  Doetrtot  of  Rtfigiout  Evoltition 

credit  of  the  narratives  in  which  the  miraculous 
IS  involved.   In  fact,  the  presence  oCa  aifaele 
IS  of  itself  accounted  a  sufficient  r«HOii  for 
'suspecting'  the  truth  of  a  story,  or  at  aU 
events  the  credibility  of  its  witnesses.    If  ther« 
was  no  record  of  miracles  in  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  to 
much  zeal  would  have  been  displayed  in  en- 
deavouring to  throw  doubt  on  the  authenticity 
of  their  contents.    We  find  no  such  display  of 
'critical  •  energy  in  the  case  of  the  Mohamnedui 
Koran. 

But  putting  tlie  question  of  miracles  aside, 
there  is  one  point  on  which  we  have  a  right  to 
demand  a  clear  ans^ver  frcii;  the  advocates  of 
the  'higher  criticism'  who  still  maintain  their 
adherence  to  the  historical  faith  of  Christendom 
It  was  to  the  Old  Testament  that  Christ  and 
the  eariy  Church  appealed  in  proof  of  His 
divinity.   '  Search  the  Scriptures,' said  our  LoixJ. 
for  •  they  are  they  which  testify  of  Me.'    It  was 
m  them  that  the  life  and  death,  the  resurrection 
and  the  work  of  Christ  were  foreshadowed  and 
predicted  (Luke  xxiv.  25-27),  and  upon  this 
fact  He  based  His  claim  to  be  believed. 
Was  our  Lord  right,  or  must  we  im^ 


Wat  our  Lord  r%lit? 
hearken  to  the  modem  *critie'  whea  heteUaua 
that  the  endeavour  to  find  MMtnie  ffophedet 
in  the  Old  Testament,  in  die  aenw  in  wliidi 
Christ  and  His  Church  undentood  die  phfise, 
is  an  iUusion  of  the  past?  We  cannot  serve 
two  masters;  either  we  must  believe  diat  hi 
the  fifty-third  chapter  d  Isaiah  we  have  a  real 
portraiture  of  Christ,  or  else  that  Christ  was 
mistaken,  and  that  the  portniture  was  ool^ 
read  into  the  chapter  in  hiter  daysL  Thewoidi 
of  Canon  Liddon  in  reference  to  the  critical 
theory  of  the  origin  of  the  Fentalen^  stffl  hold 
good :  '  How  is  such  a  suppoaitioo  leooiiciiiliie 
with  the  authority  of  Hun  who  haa  so  aoiemniK 
commended  to  us  the  Booka  ol  Moses,  and 
whoir  Christians  believe  to  be  too  wise  to  be 

Himself  deceived*  and  too  good  to  deodve  His 
creatuiea?' 


INDEX 


AhnAao^  oOtmatUie  time 

AoMvlntqt  IV,  creed  of,  37. 
Aaniiiid,  «w  Khanunnrabi. 
Aoaiyiit,  value  of  critical,  10. 
Attruc,  Con/te/uru  tur  la 

G*tuuof,a6. 
Archaeology,  value  of,  la. 
'Ai^wnent  from  silence,* 

the, «]. 
Ari(,tiie,5i. 

Babylonia,  culture  in,  33  ; 
writing  of,  33;  alphabet  of, 
35;  langnago  of,  30;  laws 
of.  60 ;  ntual  of,  183. 

Bg^^oha,  work  of,  46. 

BMi  oftbt  Flood,  the  three. 

Blood  revenge,  73. 
Book  of  the  Dead,  the,  39. 

Carmichad,  J.,  quoted,  47. 
ChaUenee,  a,  i& 
Chedor-lMaier,  caa^a^  of; 

Christ,  witBM  of,  137. 
Codes  of  Moses  and  Am- 

raphel  compared,  67  sq. 
Concubines,  So. 
CoBtemporaneoas  evidence, 

test  or,  II. 
Copyist^  honesty  of,  65- 
Craatioii,  storfea  of,  com- 

psnd,  nosq. 
Cic^or  and  debtor,  relation 

of,  76. 

Death  penalty,  the,  81. 
Delta,  tte,  8?jl. 

Deluge,  the,  stotieaoi;  so,  46. 
Doctors,  79. 
Djmasties  of  Egypt,  34. 

Ba,  the  god,  40.  loa. 
BKTP^  date  'of  literature  of, 
g^^^  la.  3.; 

UlSrT"**'- 
Blohist  dement,  the,  so,  «o. 

g*5^.g«i«..97«,'.^ 

Btham,  91. 
Biihratsit  tba,  97. 


Evans,  Dr.  A.  J.,  discoveries 

of,  41. 

Evolution,  appeatlSk  >.<(•  true 

vahie  of,  17. 
Exodus,  the,  date  of,  89. 

Flood,  the,  stories  of,  30, 46. 

Gilgamrs,  epic  of  the  De 

tage,  ao,  47. 
Goshen,  91,  93. 
Greek  inscriptions,  41 ;  its 

civilization  and  cnticism, 

I30 ;  writing,  uj. 
Gnnkel,  103. 

Hagar,  80. 
Herodotus,  45. 

Inheritance,  law  of,  74. 
lasptaation.  thaoriasof,  134. 
ImeHto^  dM,  aute  of,  1 13. 

Khammn-rabi,  date  of,  57; 

story  of,  59;  code  of,  67. 
Khetein,  91. 
Khn^n-Aten,  38. 
Kings,  Books  of,  sources  of. 

44. 

Kralvdlatoveria^4i 
KMl«4raaUuidi.^* 


Letters  qaotad  0$,  ga. 
Lewis,  Sir  G.  C,  qaoted 
Literary  tact.  ij. 
Uteratans,datealial. 

Meneptah,  91. 
Menes,  34. 

lif  erodach,  story  of,  98. 
Migdol,  91. 
Miracles,  136. 
Morgan.  M.de.  67. 
Moses,  ekafacler  4a. 

Naras-Sin,  a 
NaWUe,  Dr., 

Newman,  Dr_ 
Noah,  51!  ^ 
N«Malu^ 


35- 


Oriental  character  of  the 
Bible,  9. 

Pentateuch,  the,  analysis  of, 
10 ;  criticism  of,  ai ;  au- 
thorship of,  4a:  sources  of. 
44;  composition  of,  46: 
geography  of,  88. 

Philology,  exaggerated  es> 
timate  of  value  of,  13. 

Rnches,  Dr.,  quoted,  64. 

PlthOOli  Q(X 

Polythetel,  Balqloaiaa,  ifltf 

Proverbs  of  PtaUM^the, 

Qaqemna,  31. 
Raamses,  90. 

Rains,  the  former  uA  Oa 

latter,  «. 
Ramses  II,  90. 
Ritual  codes,  83. 

Sargon,  35,  40. 
giur,  the,  91. 
Slavery,  71. 

Stanley,  Dean,  quoted,  47. 
Strife,  penalties  for.  79. 
Subjunctive  method,  tbsL  17. 
Sumerian  prniMi^uMiadaa. 
Surgeons,  77.       *  ^ 


49- 


Tablets,  discoveries  of,  41. 

Tehom,  io8. 

Tel  el-Amama,  diacovariaa 

at.  37. 
Thukot,  9t. 
Tiamit,  loi. 
Tigris,  the,  97. 
TadgiiBla.iS: 


Wolf,  quoted,  ak 
Writ^bMi<Wfli;a& 
Xisiarai^4^ 


